A gunman has opened fire in central Paris, killing three people and wounding three others.

Iran PressEurope: Witnesses said the attacker targeted a Kurdish community center and restaurant, and prosecutors said they would look into a possible racist motive.

A suspect, aged 69, was quickly arrested, and it soon emerged he had been freed from prison recently.

Authorities appealed for people to avoid the area in Strasbourg-Saint Denis in the 10th district of Paris.

There is no confirmed motive for the shooting, but Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau confirmed that the suspect had previously been charged with racist violence.

That incident - in which he attacked tents at a migrant camp in Paris with a sword - took place at Bercy on 8 December 2021. It was not clear why he had recently been released.

Local Mayor Alexandra Cordebard said the suspect was also wounded in the shooting and that three places had come under fire: the Kurdish community center, a restaurant and a hairdresser. Two people were shot in the salon.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the murders had been committed by a "far-right activist."

"We were walking in the street and heard gunshots," a witness, Ali Dalek, told the BBC. "We turned around and saw people running left and right.

"And then, five or six minutes later, because we know people who work at the hair salon, we went in and we saw that they had arrested a guy - an old man, elderly, tall."

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