Mohamed Amra: manhunt underway for escaped French prisoner 'The Fly'

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to do everything possible to find the perpetrators of an attack on a prison van that killed two prison officers and freed an inmate.

Stills from CCTV footage revealed the "violence that was unleashed" at a tollbooth in Normandy yesterday morning, said Le Monde. Mohamed Amra, nicknamed "La Mouche" ("The Fly"), was being transferred from prison to court in a white van when it was hit "head-on" by a black Peugeot. Four men "dressed in black, wearing balaclavas and carrying automatic weapons" shot dead two officers and freed Amra.

Only two days before the "brutal daylight raid", he had been caught "trying to saw through the bars of his prison cell", said The Telegraph. He was sent to a disciplinary unit and his surveillance level was increased. 

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Amra had 13 convictions for several minor offences, but the French press have called him a "high-flying bandit", who is reportedly involved in international drug trafficking. He is also suspected of being behind an assassination attempt on a French man in Spain last year.

Hundreds of police and gendarmes have been mobilised to take part in the search. Prison officer unions announced a day of minimum service today and asked for urgent measures to improve the safety of staff.

The two dead officers are said to be a 21-year-old who left behind a wife and two children, and another man whose wife was five months pregnant. Three other guards were seriously injured and are said to be in a life-threatening condition.

The ambush has "stunned the country with its brazenness", said Roger Cohen, reporting from Paris, for The New York Times. "At a time when France is trying hard to project an image of law and order ahead of the Olympic Games, the images of violence on the main highway from Paris to Normandy were a blow."

Writing on X, Macron said the attack was a "shock to us all" and pledged an "uncompromising" response.