Paris newspaper office shooting suspect arrested

The suspect in a Paris newspaper office shooting that left a photographer gravely wounded and other attacks that triggered a two-day nationwide manhunt was arrested Wednesday evening, French authorities said.

Agnes Thibault Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the French prosecutor’s office, said that “a suspect with a strong resemblance to the shooter” was arrested Wednesday evening in an underground parking lot in Bois-Colombes, 6 miles north of Paris.

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Surveillance footage shows a gunman said to heavily resemble the suspect now in custody. Police have no possible motive in Monday’s attacks.

She could not confirm French media reports that he is being treated in a hospital.

The motive for the Monday attacks is still unclear. Authorities believed a lone gunman was involved in the shooting at the prominent daily newspaper Liberation, a similar incident at news network BFM-TV, a shooting outside French bank Societe Generale, and a brief hostage-taking in which the suspect hijacked a car.

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Surveillance footage shows a gunman who sparked a two-day nationwide manhunt in France and heightened awareness about attacks on the media.

Authorities released video footage and photos of the shooter, who was wielding a pump-action shotgun.

The shooting prompted cries of concern about attacks on the media. The culture minister called Liberation — an outspoken left-leaning paper founded by Jean-Paul Sartre that has seen financial difficulties and layoffs in recent years — a “pillar of our democracy.”

The attacks prompted heightened security at media offices and on the busy Champs-Elysees shopping avenue.

In a sign of the jumpy mood, police in the southern town of Perigueux upped security at schools, churches and public buildings Wednesday after an armed man was spotted in the street. Police later said he had nothing to do with the Paris attacks.