A man who shot dead a policeman on the Champs Elysees in Paris on Thursday was the focus of an anti-terrorism probe with a history of attempting to kill officers, sources close to the investigation said.
Cheurfi was being investigated by anti-terrorism authorities but was not on a watchlist of known radicals, police sources said.
Police said he opened fire on a police van, killing a 37-year-old officer, before shooting at other officers guarding a Turkish tourist office on the heavily patrolled Champs-Elysees shopping and dining boulevard.
"Turkey and the Turkish people, who have been subjected to similar attacks many times, understand and share the suffering of the French people", the statement said.
Brandet later said a man with that name had turned himself in at a police station in Antwerp.
A second police officer was shot and injured and the assailant was killed in the incident today. He was also convicted in 2003 of attempted homicide in shootings on two police officers.
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The French Interior Ministry said that police officers were "deliberately" targeted in the attack. Daesh quickly claimed responsibility for the attack.
The far-right and anti-EU Marine Le Pen and three other candidates - Francois Fillon, Jean-Luc Melenchon, and Emmanuel Macron - are in a neck and neck race that ends Sunday, when French take to the polls for the first round of voting.
But he was known to French authorities and armed with an AK-47 rifle, two US law enforcement officials briefed on the attack told NBC News earlier.
Cheurfi was detained two months ago after speaking threateningly about the police but released for lack of evidence, according to two police officials, speaking to AP on condition of anonymity.
Anti-terror prosecutors immediately took up the investigation and President Francois Hollande said the attack was of "a terrorist nature". "We have to be strong and we have to be vigilant, and I've been saying it for a long time". "It is unusual that this attack comes at a time when, apart from in some circles, the terrorist issue has not been approached enough by candidates during the campaign".
"Nothing must hamper this democratic moment, essential for our country", Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after a top-level meeting on Friday that reviewed the government's already heightened security plans for the two-round vote that begins on Sunday. He called the attack "a awful thing", and said it was another example of the sort of violence that "never ends". Belgian security officials had warned French counterparts before the attack that El Osri was a "very risky individual en route to France" aboard the Thalys high-speed train.
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