France prison van attack: International arrest warrant issued for The Fly in manhunt

Fugitive Mohamed Amra was being transported from a court hearing in Rouen to a secure jail in Evreux when his prison van was ambushed by four gunmen shortly after 11am on Tuesday.

Fabrice Moello, a 52-year-old father of two, and Arnaud Garcia, a 35-year-old whose wife was five months pregnant, were killed in machine gun fire in Normandy, while three more guards were left seriously injured.

A waiting black Peugeot vehicle pulled out and rammed into the front of the van, bringing it to a sudden stop, said Paris state prosecutor Laure Beccuau.

Several men wearing balaclavas and equipped with military-grade weapons stepped out of the car and began firing at the van. The assailants were joined by a second crew who stepped out of a nearby Audi. The whole operation took place in around two minutes, officials said.

Frederic Liakhoff, secretary of the prison officer union FO-Justice at the penitentiary centre in Caen, told the AFP that the prison guards accompanying Amra were armed with “simple Sig Sauer [handguns] while they faced weapons of war”.

Footage taken by motorists appeared to show the men opening doors to the van before a man, believed to be Amra, stepped out.

As they fled, one member appeared to attempt to set alight the black Peugeot.

The gang then sped off in an Audi A5 and a BMW 5 series, which have since both been found abandoned and burned out.

A prisoner nicknamed “The Fly” has become notorious in France overnight after a daring and bloody escape from a prison convoy in Normandy that left two guards dead.

Mohamed Amra, 30, has a long and violent criminal history that has now culminated in a high-profile search.

Known as “La Mouche” (The Fly), Amra has also been referred to by other aliases such as “Yanis,” “Momo,” and “Schtroumpf” (Smurf). According to French media, these nicknames reflect his elusive nature and extensive activities.

Thomas Adamson reports:

Two officers were shot dead and three others were left seriously injured when the prisoner known as “The Fly” escaped.

The suspected drug boss, Mohamed Amra, was being transported from a court hearing in Rouen to a secure jail in Evreux when his prison van was ambushed by four gunmen shortly after 11am on Tuesday.

The two men killed were identified as agents from the regional centre for judicial extractions, based in Caen.

Fabrice Moello, a 52-year-old father of two, and Arnaud Garcia, a 34-year-old whose wife was five months pregnant, were killed in machine gun fire in Normandy.

Prison workers across France on Wednesday held moments of silence to commemorate the officers killed.

“I haven’t closed my eyes all night. I cried so much that I have no more tears left in my body,” said Dominique Garcia, the father of the 34-year-old slain officer.

Hundreds of police officers have been deployed across northern France to find the fugitive gangster known as “The Fly”.

Interpol issued a Red Notice for fugitive Mohamed Amra on the second day of the hunt at the request of the French authorities.

French home minister Gerald Darmanin said the government had deployed unprecedented resources to capture the armed gang involved in breaking out Amra, including assistance from foreign countries. Around 450 officers were deployed to the Eure region where the attack took place.

“We are investing considerable resources, we are making a lot of progress,” he told RTL radio.

Across France, thousands of prison guards staged a symbolic 24-hour shut-down of jails in support of their slain colleagues.

Right-wing politicians have targeted the French government over the deadly escape of notorious gangster “The Fly”.

They said the brazenness of the assault showed that the centrist government had lost its grip on drug crime, comparing France to countries with longstanding reputations for gang violence.

“We’re on a path to Mexicanisation,” Bruno Retailleau, leader of the main centre-right opposition party in the French senate, said.

“Prisons are sieves. Dealers run their drug trafficking businesses from jail.”

Far-right politician Marion Marechal posted a video on X of herself offering support to guards outside a prison in Bordeaux.

“We have the impression of being in a third-world country,” she said, after one of the guards asked how such a violent attack could take place in France.

The French prime minister Gabriel Attal warned the perpetrators that they will be caught.

“I say it again to the perpetrators: we are tracking you, we will find you and we will punish you,” the he told the Assembly.

As lorries and family-filled cars filed through the motorway toll station at Incarville in north west France, it felt like any other weekday morning.

But at just before 9am on Tuesday, drama suddenly unfolded as a gang of masked gunmen ambushed a prison convoy at the booth and freed a suspected drugs lord nicknamed “The Fly”.

Firing more than 30 rounds from automatic weapons, the assailants killed two prison guards and injured three more before fleeing with the inmate, 30-year-old Mohamed Amra, in a brazen attack witnessed by startled motorists on the A417 motorway near the town of Val-de-Reuil.

Alex Ross reports.

A massive manhunt is underway in France for an armed gang that killed two prison officers and seriously injuring three others, to spring an inmate they were escorting.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said “unprecedented” efforts were deployed, with hundreds of officers mobilised in the search for the escaped convict Mohamed Amra and the assailants who ambushed the convoy transporting him on Tuesday.

Without giving full details about the extent of the manhunt, he said 450 officers had been deployed in the region of the attack to search for the assailants and clues about their whereabouts.