2 French prison officers killed in ambush

Three other officers injured in firefight at toll booth with gunmen who freed inmate

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French police were on May 15 hunting for a group of gunmen who killed two prison officers in an attack at a motorway toll booth that freed a convict linked to gangland drug killings.

President Emmanuel Macron vowed that everything would be done to find the inmate and those behind the attack.

Besides the two prison officers who were killed, three others were wounded, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

The incident took place late on May 14 morning at a road toll booth in Incarville in the Eure region of northern France.

The inmate was being transported back to prison in the town of Evreux, after being questioned by a judge in the regional centre of Rouen in Normandy.

The prosecutor said the prison van was rammed head-on by a stolen Peugeot vehicle as it went through the toll crossing.

But the prison vehicle was also followed by an Audi from which gunmen emerged who shot at both vehicles in the prison convoy.

"Everything is being done to find the perpetrators of this crime," Mr Macron wrote on X.

"We will be uncompromising," he added, describing the attack as a "shock".