3 Soldiers killed in France drive-by shooting

Three French soldiers were killed Thursday when a gunman on a scooter opened fire on them near a military base in the southwestern city of Montauban and fled, officials said. The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear but officials said they believed the shooter, who was being hunted by police, had acted alone and described the attack as a "criminal act". The defence ministry said the three soldiers, from the locally based 17th Parachute Engineering Regiment (RGP), were aged 28, 26 and 24. One had been taken to hospital in critical condition and later died from his wounds. "The defence ministry is confident that the justice system, under the authority of French prosecutors, will be able to shed all light on this criminal act as quickly as possible," Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said in a statement. A local official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the shooting took place around 2:10 pm local time (1310 GMT) on a street not far from the base housing the regiment. The official said the scooter-rider, wearing a helmet with visor, fired on the three uniformed soldiers on a street near businesses, shops and a bank branch, then drove off at speed. Investigators found 15 spent cartridges at the scene, police said. The official told AFP it was not clear if the victims were withdrawing money from the bank, but a television news report of the incident said that one of them had. Authorities launched an extensive search for the gunman involving a large number of police and national gendarmes, the official said. The incident follows another shooting on Sunday that saw a 30-year-old soldier shot dead by an assailant on a motorcycle in a residential area of Toulouse, 46 kilometres (29 miles) south of Montauban. Prosecutors said they were considering a number of possibilities in that shooting, in which the victim was an off-duty NCO from the 1st Parachute Logistics Regiment, including that it was the result of a personal dispute. But police refused to say whether or not they believed there was a link between the two shootings. Thursday's victims were from a 1,000-strong unit of sappers specialised in mine and explosives clearance, breaching fortifications and urban warfare. In recent years the 17th RGP has often been deployed on operations in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Balkans, having been founded in 1946 and then fighting in colonial wars in South East Asia and the UN action in Korea. In is headquartered in Montauban in southwest France, a region which is home to all of France's elite airborne units. France still has more than 3,000 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led mission fighting the Taliban.