Mr. Collomb said the gunman had acted alone.
Christian Guibbert, a retired policeman, told French media that he was shopping for groceries with his wife and his sister-in-law when he heard gunshots, and saw a “very agitated” man with a handgun and a knife, yelling and shooting into the ceiling.
“He was yelling threats at people, ‘everybody on the ground,’ ” Mr. Guibbert said. “ ‘Allahu akbar,’ yes, he yelled that several times.”
He said he hid his wife, his sister-in-law and other customers in a meat locker, and then called the police. “That’s when he saw me and ran after me,” Mr. Guibbert said, describing how he escaped through an emergency exit.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a bulletin issued by its Amaq News Agency. It described the assailant as a “soldier of the Islamic State,” and the events as a response to the group’s call to target its enemies. That wording suggests that the attacker was inspired by the Islamic State, rather than directed by it.
Some French news organizations described the gunman as Moroccan, but government officials did not confirm that.
In a post on Twitter, Marine Le Pen, the hard-right, anti-immigrant politician who ran for president last year, linked the attack to immigration policies she contends are too permissive. “When will the government realize that we are at war?” she wrote.
Mr. Collomb said that Mr. Lakdim first hijacked a car in the area, killing one person and wounding another. He then crossed paths in Carcassonne with a group of police officers who were returning to their homes after a jog, shooting at them and wounding one. The wound was not life-threatening.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Mr. Lakdim then drove to the supermarket in Trèbes, firing shots as he entered, killing two more people and taking one hostage. Mr. Collomb said a 45-year-old police officer “voluntarily” traded places with the hostage.
The officer, a lieutenant colonel with France’s gendarmerie, left his phone on a nearby table with an open line, Mr. Collomb said, enabling police outside to listen in.
After more gunshots were heard, the police stormed the store and killed Mr. Lakdim. The lieutenant colonel was “seriously wounded” in the exchange of gunfire, Mr. Collomb said, praising him for an “act of heroism.”
Speaking at a news conference in Brussels, where he was attending a European Union summit meeting, President Emmanuel Macron said that “we believe that it is indeed a terrorist attack.”
Several French news reports said that Mr. Lakdim had demanded the release of Mr. Abdeslam — the sole surviving member of the Islamic State group that killed 130 people in and around Paris in a series of coordinated attacks in November 2015 — from detention in France.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Mr. Collomb did not directly confirm those reports, saying only that he had called for the “liberation of prisoners” and that it was unclear how he had chosen his targets on Friday.
The Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism cases nationwide, said that a terrorism investigation had been opened and that the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, was heading to Trèbes.
France continues to be on high alert after deadly terrorist attacks struck the country in 2015 and 2016, mainly in Paris and Nice. Although there have not been any large attacks since the one in Nice in July 2016, there have been several smaller-scale assaults by lone individuals, and the French authorities regularly announce that new plots have been thwarted.
The deadly attack in Trèbes is the first since Mr. Macron’s government lifted the state of emergency that had been in place since the November 2015 attacks and Parliament passed a counterterrorism law that made permanent some of the emergency measures.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
France also recently unveiled plans to toughen its stance on combating extremism in prisons and schools.
In a previous deadly attack, in October, two women were killed by a man with a knife at the main train station in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.
Police officers and other security personnel have been targeted in a string of attacks over the past two years.
Three police officers — Franck Brinsolaro, Clarissa Jean-Philippe and Ahmed Merabet — were killed in attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and in a Paris suburb in January 2015.
A year later, on the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack, officers fatally shot a man with fake explosives as he tried to attack a police station in northern Paris.
In June 2016, a Paris police captain and his longtime partner were killed in their home as their 3-year-old son watched. The attack, in Magnanville, was claimed by the Islamic State.
In February 2017, a man armed with two large knives and shouting “God is great” in Arabic lunged at a military patrol near an entrance to the Louvre. He was shot.
A month later, a gunman was shot and killed by a military patrol at Orly Airport, south of Paris, after he attacked a soldier.
And in April, Xavier Jugelé, 37, a Paris police officer who had responded to the attack at the Bataclan concert hall in November 2015, fell victim to terrorism himself. He was in a police vehicle on the heavily guarded Champs-Élysées when a gunman opened fire, killing him and wounding two other officers, along with a bystander.
(CNN) Three people have been killed in southern France after a gunman stole a car and took hostages in a town's supermarket, in what authorities are treating as a terror attack.
Police shot dead the gunman, French media reported, after a four-hour standoff Friday at the Super U supermarket in the town of Trebes.
Police respond to the hostage situation in Trebes on Friday.
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb identified the gunman as 26-year-old Redouane Lakdim. He was known to authorities for minor crimes, including drug offenses, Collomb said.
The gunman had opened fire and killed two people there, he told reporters. One other was killed earlier in the carjacking in the city of Carcassonne.
"People were absolutely calm before and never though that there could be an attack in a town like this," Collomb told reporters, adding that the risk of terrorism in France was still "very high."
Read More
A terror attacker has been shot dead by police after he took hostages and fired at officers in the south of France.
Police raided the Super U shop in Trèbes early this afternoon and killed Redouane Lakdim, 26, who is said to have killed three people near Toulouse and claimed affiliation with Isis.
At least a dozen people were wounded in a string of assaults.
Investigators think the suspect hijacked a car after leaving the nearby city of Carcassonne and that one of the people in the vehicle was killed.
Interior minister Gérard Collomb said Lakdim then shot at a group of police officers before hiding inside the supermarket, where two more people were killed.
Please allow a moment for the live blog to load.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Police have surrounded the French supermarket, as the BBC's Lucy Williamson reports
A gunman is believed to have killed at least two people during a hostage-taking at a supermarket in Trèbes, southern France.
An operation involving elite police is continuing at the Super U shop, where others were wounded.
Reports say the gunman, who remains in the supermarket, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Earlier, a policeman was shot and wounded while jogging with colleagues in Carcassonne, a 15-minute drive away.
He was shot in the shoulder by the same suspect involved in the supermarket hostage-taking but is not critically injured, Yves Lefebvre, secretary-general of the SGP Police-FO union told the Associated Press.
Trèbes Mayor Eric Menassi told BFM TV that the gunman was now alone in the shop with one police officer, after other hostages were freed.
The suspect is said to be heavily armed and asking for the release of Salah Abdeslam, the most important surviving suspect in the 13 November 2015 Paris attacks, which killed 130 people.
Reports say the suspect is known to French intelligence services and that his mother is at the scene.
A security source told French news agency AFP that most employees and customers at the supermarket "managed to flee".
Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said the situation was "serious" and that all signs pointed towards a "terrorist act".
Image copyright La vie a Trèbes/Reuters
Hundreds of police officers have been deployed to the area, and the vicinity has been cordoned off.
Counter-terrorism prosecutors are leading the investigation but few details have been provided.
France has been hit with several deadly jihadist attacks since 2015 and has been on high alert since. A state of emergency put in place after the 2015 attacks in Paris was lifted in October.
In February, Salah Abdeslam went on trial in Belgium over a shootout in Brussels that led to his capture months after the Paris attacks. He is not expected to go on trial in France until 2020 at the earliest.
Major terror attacks in France
1 Oct 2017 - Two women stabbed to death at Marseille railway station; attack claimed by IS
Two women stabbed to death at Marseille railway station; attack claimed by IS 26 Jul 2016 - Two attackers slit a priest's throat at his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy. They are shot dead by police
Two attackers slit a priest's throat at his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy. They are shot dead by police 14 Jul 2016 - A huge lorry mows down a crowd of people on the Nice beachfront during Bastille Day celebrations, killing 86. IS claims the attack - by a Tunisian-born driver, later shot dead by police
A huge lorry mows down a crowd of people on the Nice beachfront during Bastille Day celebrations, killing 86. IS claims the attack - by a Tunisian-born driver, later shot dead by police 13 Jun 2016 - A police officer and his partner are stabbed to death at home by a jihadist, in Magnanville, west of Paris. He declares allegiance to IS, and police later kill him
A police officer and his partner are stabbed to death at home by a jihadist, in Magnanville, west of Paris. He declares allegiance to IS, and police later kill him 13 Nov 2015 - IS jihadists armed with bombs and assault rifles attack Paris, targeting the national stadium, cafes and Bataclan concert hall. The co-ordinated assault leaves 130 people dead, and more than 350 wounded
IS jihadists armed with bombs and assault rifles attack Paris, targeting the national stadium, cafes and Bataclan concert hall. The co-ordinated assault leaves 130 people dead, and more than 350 wounded 7-9 Jan 2015 - Two Islamist gunmen storm the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 17 people. Another Islamist militant kills a policewoman the next day and takes hostages at a Jewish supermarket in Paris. Four hostages are killed before police shoot the gunman dead. The other two gunmen are cornered and killed by police in a siege.
Are you in the area? Have you witnessed what has happened? If it is safe to share your experience please email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:
