Suspect arrested after car rams Paris anti-terror troops

Paris : French police shot and arrested a suspect in a dramatic motorway chase Wednesday after a car smashed into soldiers outside a barracks in a Paris suburb, injuring six.

The suspected terror attack follows a string of assaults that have hit France since January 2015, claiming more than 230 lives.

The suspect, a 36-year-old Algerian man, has been hospitalised after police shot him five times.

The servicemen were hit by a BMW which drove down a quiet street in the upmarket western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret at around 8:00 am (0600 GMT).

It accelerated as it neared the troops, rammed into them and then sped away. Three were shocked and lightly hurt, while the other three sustained more serious injuries which are not life-threatening, officials said.

"I heard a huge crash which I thought was the sound of scaffolding being put up," said Thierry Chappe, an AFP employee who lives in a building opposite the crime scene. 

Some 300 police later tracked the rented vehicle to a motorway near the northern port of Calais.

After a chase, officers opened fire, wounding the unarmed driver who was arrestedthen taken to hospital, sources involved in the manhunt said.

The suspect lived in the Yvelines suburb of Paris and had no previous convictions.

Pictures showed the black BMW with a crumpled front end and smashed windscreen on the A16 motorway.

An AFP journalist saw masked police carrying out a search in Bezons in the northwestern Paris suburbs.