A car has crashed into a police van before bursting into flames around the Champs \u00c9lys\u00e9es area of central Paris, police officials say.<\/p>\n
The driver, who had a weapon inside the car, was knocked unconscious and is seriously injured, French media report.<\/p>\n
Police say the situation is now under control, and neither law enforcement officers nor civilians were injured.<\/p>\n
France is under a state of emergency after being hit by a wave of deadly terror attacks in recent years.<\/p>\n
A policeman was shot dead and two others were wounded in an attack on the Champs \u00c9lys\u00e9es in April, just days before the presidential election.<\/p>\n
Sniffer dogs<\/strong><\/p>\n French media, quoting police sources, say the incident on Monday was deliberate.<\/p>\n A white car is standing in the middle of the empty avenue with one door open and sniffer dogs have been sent in, the BBC’s Hugh Schofield reports from Paris.<\/p>\n Reports say officers had to smash the windows of the car to pull the driver out.<\/p>\n Our correspondent says there are always many police and gendarme vehicles near the spot, as it is next to the local police station.<\/p>\n The national police Twitter account had earlier said (in French) that there was an “ongoing police operation”, warning people to respect the security cordon.<\/p>\n The anti-terrorist section of the prosecutor’s office has opened up an investigation.<\/p>\n Interior Minister G\u00e9rard Collomb tweeted a picture of himself at the scene of the “attack aimed at our security forces”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A car has crashed into a police van before bursting into flames around the Champs \u00c9lys\u00e9es area of central Paris, police officials say. The driver, who had a weapon inside the car, was knocked unconscious and is seriously injured, French media report. Police say the situation is now under control, and neither law enforcement officers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[8360,3758,5222],"class_list":["post-329643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-anti-terrorism","tag-france","tag-paris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}