Security forces are searching through eastern France for a man suspected of killing three people in an attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg and who was known to have been religiously radicalised while in jail.
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With the gunman on the run, France raised its security threat to the highest alert level, strengthening controls on its border with Germany as elite commandos backed by helicopters hunted for the suspect.
French and German agents checked vehicles and trams crossing the Europa Bridge on the Rhine river, along which the Franco-German frontier runs, police said, backing up traffic in both directions.
Hundreds of French troops and police were taking part in the manhunt.
Police identified the suspect as Strasbourg-born Cherif Chekatt, 29, who is on an intelligence services watch list as a potential security risk.
"The hunt continues," Deputy Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on France Inter radio. Asked whether the suspect might have left France, he said: "That cannot be ruled out."
The gunman struck on Tuesday evening just as the picturesque Christmas market in the historic city was shutting down, He shot dead three people and wounded at least 12 others.
He engaged in two brief gunfights with security forces as he evaded a police dragnet and was thought to have been wounded in the exchanges, Nunez said.
The Paris prosecutor's anti-terrorism unit has taken up the investigation, suggesting that the authorities are treating the shooting as a possible terrorist attack.
No one has yet claimed responsibility, but the US-based Site intelligence group, which monitors jihadist websites, said Islamic State supporters were celebrating.
Nunez said the suspect Chekatt had spent time in prison in France and Germany.
"It was during these spells in jail that we detected a radicalisation in his religious practices. But we there were never signs he was preparing an attack," the deputy minister said.
A spokeswoman for Germany's BKA criminal police said Chekatt was deported to France in 2017 and was known to French authorities as a radical Islamist.
The revelation that Chekatt was on a security watchlist will raise questions over possible intelligence failures, though some 26,000 individuals suspected of posing a security risk to France are on the "S File" list.
Of these, about 10,000 are believed to have been radicalised, sometimes in fundamentalist Salafist Muslim mosques, in jail or abroad.
Police had raided the suspect's home early on Tuesday in connection with a homicide investigation. Five people were detained and under interrogation as part of that investigation.
Australian Associated Press
