The attack, which the Paris prosecutor’s office was investigating as a possible act of terrorism, prompted a partial evacuation and security sweep of the airport and briefly halted flights.
PARIS — A man who attacked a soldier at Orly Airport outside Paris on Saturday was fatally shot in what the Paris prosecutor’s office said it was investigating as a possible act of terrorism. The attack occurred shortly after the man shot at a police officer during a routine traffic stop in a Paris suburb, the French interior minister said.
The shooting at Orly prompted a partial evacuation of the airport, the diversion of all flights and a security sweep to determine whether the assailant had left any explosives at the airport’s two terminals, officials said. Incoming flights were diverted to nearby Charles de Gaulle Airport.
The chain of events started when the man was stopped by the police in a routine identity check at 6:50 a.m. in the Paris suburb of Garges-lès-Gonesse, Bruno Le Roux, the interior minister, said. The man fired a pistol loaded with birdshot and fled. One police officer sustained minor injuries.
The assailant then carjacked a vehicle in Vitry-sur-Seine, about eight miles north of Orly Airport, and drove to the airport, where he attacked a female soldier who was part of a three-soldier unit patrolling the airport, said Jean-Yves Le Drian, the defense minister. Two soldiers opened fire on the man as he attacked, killing him.
A spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Saturday morning that its antiterrorism unit and the French Intelligence Service had opened an investigation into the events.
The authorities did not release the man’s name, but the spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office said he was 39 years old and had a long police record, including arrests for robbery and drug-related offenses. She said that the police had taken both his brother and father into custody for questioning.
The episode was reminiscent of an attack in February near the Louvre museum that forced the museum to close. In that instance, the attacker, brandishing two long knives, attacked soldiers patrolling in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall between the subway station closest to the museum and one of the museum’s entrances. He injured a soldier before being shot several times.
The episode on Saturday came amid a heated presidential election campaign in France, with the first round of voting just five weeks away, on April 23.
The unit attacked at the airport was part of Operation Sentinel, which involves about 7,000 soldiers who patrol public areas in France, including high-profile locations like airports, areas near large tourist attractions and train stations.
The French Interior Ministry confirmed that special operations police officers who also deal with terrorism were at the airport, and asked people in the area to stay away from the security perimeter. Explosives experts were also on the scene and had completed their inspection by noon.
One of Orly’s two terminals, Orly-West, had reopened by 1 p.m., and flights were resuming, according to the Paris Airport Authority. Orly-South, where the attack took place, remained closed so that the prosecutor’s office could collect evidence and complete its investigation.
France continues to be on heightened vigilance after the November 2015 terrorist attacks that killed 130 people, including 90 at the Bataclan nightclub in Paris, and an attack in Nice last July that killed 86 people when the driver of a truck plowed into a crowd of people who had gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks.
The attack at Orly increases the likelihood that France’s state of emergency, which has been in effect since November 2015, will remain in place. The French justice minister had suggested this past week that it might be possible to lift it.
The top government official in the area of the airport, the prefect of Val-de-Marnes, asked that passengers on their way to Orly stay away for the time being.
Orly is one of two large international airports in the Paris region. It handles most domestic fights and some international ones and served 31.2 million passengers in 2016, according to the Paris Airport Authority.
