Paris - Four people including a baby and a police officer were killed in a shoot-out at a campsite in the Somme region of northern France, local authorities confirmed on Tuesday.
Three of the victims - a man, a woman and a six-month-old baby - were killed when a man entered a campsite and started shooting.
Two police officers who intervened were both wounded and one later died.
Two other people - the gunman and a child - were seriously injured, a spokesman for the Somme prefecture said.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the violence in the town of Roye, which lies just over 100 kilometres north of Paris.
“A man entered the camp.. and killed a six-month-old baby, a woman and a man in cold blood,” said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve in an address carried by the AFP news agency.
“He injured several others including two officers, one of them gravely, as well as another tree-year-old child,” said the minister. The gravely injured officer Cazeneuve referred to is the one who later died.
Cazeneuve used the expression “les gens du voyage” to describe the shooter and the people at the campsite, an expression often used in the French context to refer to members of the Roma minority.
“My thoughts are with the families, the victims, and with the police officer who died serving France,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted after the shooting.
DPA