Tag Archives: France

Car rams police vehicle on Paris’ Champs Elysees, driver likely dead

A burned car is seen on the Champs Elysees avenue after an incident in Paris, France, June 19, 2017.

By Michel Rose and Marine Pennetier

PARIS (Reuters) – A driver deliberately rammed his car into a police van as it drove down Paris’ Champs Elysees avenue and was probably killed, police said, adding that no officers or bystanders were injured and the situation was under control.

The Paris prosecutor’s counter-terrorism unit said it had opened an investigation into the incident, which occurred only a short walk away from the Elysees presidential palace and the U.S. embassy.

The car hit the front of the police van as it was overtaking it and caught fire, a police spokeswoman told reporters.

“It appears to have been a deliberate act on the part of the individual,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet.

Brandet told reporters the driver, who was armed, was “most likely dead”, adding that it was difficult to say for sure while the area where he was lying was being checked for explosives.

A report on France’s BFM TV said the man was known to security services and had been carrying a gas bottle in the car.

France has been on high security alert following a series of militant Islamist attacks in recent years, including the shooting of a policeman in an Islamic State-claimed attack on a police bus on the Champs Elysees in April.

(Reporting by Michel Rose and Marine Pennetier; Editing by Leigh Thomas and Andrew Callus)

Third French death confirmed after London Bridge attack

Commuters walk past flowers and messages left outside Monument Underground station next to London Bridge. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

PARIS (Reuters) – A third French citizen has died following Saturday’s attack on London Bridge, President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday, taking the overall death toll to eight.

“We have had the latest toll confirmed this morning, which is three people dead and eight injured on the French side,” said Macron, who was speaking during a joint news conference with Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.

British police hunting for a Frenchman missing since Saturday’s attack said earlier that they had found a body in the River Thames.

The police said the formal identification of the body had not yet taken place but that the family of the missing Frenchman, 45-year-old Xavier Thomas, had been informed of the discovery. Macron did not disclose the victim’s identity.

Le Parisien newspaper named the second Frenchman to die in the attack as 36-year-old Sebastien Belanger, while the other French victim was 27-year old Alexandre Pigeard.

(Reporting by Richard Lough and Jean-Baptiste Vey in Paris, and Kate Holton in London; editing by John Irish)

Man shot after attacking police outside Paris’ Notre Dame

French police stand at the scene of a shooting incident near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, June 6, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

PARIS (Reuters) – French police shot and wounded a man who attacked officers with a hammer outside the Notre Dame cathedral on Tuesday and the Paris prosecutor’s office swiftly launched a counter-terrorism investigation.

Armed police cordoned off the site and the cathedral in central Paris that is visited by millions of tourists every year was locked down during the incident.

The motive for the attack was not immediately clear. It comes just three days after Islamist militants killed seven people in London in a knife and van attack.

“Situation under control, one policeman injured, the assailant was neutralized and taken to hospital,” Paris police said on Twitter.

Two police sources said the officers shot the assailant in the thorax after he had threatened them with a hammer and refused to stop. One policeman was hurt, according to one source.

Karine Dalle, a spokeswoman for the Paris diocese, told BFM TV 900 people were still inside the cathedral as police secured the area.

One holidaymaker inside Notre Dame wrote on Twitter: “Not the holiday experience wanted. Trapped in Notre Dame Cathedral after police shoot a man. We are with our 2 terrified children.”

France is under a state of emergency after a wave of militant attacks since early 2015 that have killed more than 230 people across the country.

It has soldiers patrolling its streets alongside police to protect tourist sites, government buildings and events.

Three women were arrested in September after police found a car laden with gas cylinders abandoned near Notre Dame cathedral in what the interior ministry at the time said was a likely planned imminent attack.

(Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva and Emmanuel Jarry; writing by John Irish; Editing by Richard Lough)

Macron meets Russia’s Putin near Paris, promising tough talks

French President Emmanuel Macron (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) give a joint press conference at the Chateau de Versailles before the opening of an exhibition marking 300 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries in Versailles, France, May 29, 2017.

By Michel Rose and Denis Dyomkin

VERSAILLES, France (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron met Russia’s Vladimir Putin near Paris on Monday, promising some frank talking with the Kremlin leader after an election campaign in which his team accused Russian media of trying to interfere.

Macron, who took office two weeks ago, has said dialogue with Russia is vital in tackling a number of international disputes. Nevertheless, relations have been beset by mistrust, with Paris and Moscow backing opposing sides in the Syrian civil war and at odds over the Ukraine conflict.

Fresh from talks with his Western counterparts at a NATO meeting in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily, Macron was hosting the Russian president at the sumptuous 17th Century palace of Versailles outside Paris.

Amid the baroque splendor, Macron will use an exhibition on Russian Tsar Peter the Great at the former royal palace to try to get Franco-Russian relations off to a new start.

The 39-year-old French leader and Putin exchanged a cordial,  businesslike handshake and smiles when the latter stepped from his limousine for a red carpet welcome, with Macron appearing to say “welcome” to him in French.

The two men then entered the palace to start their talks.

“It’s indispensable to talk to Russia because there are a number of international subjects that will not be resolved without a tough dialogue with them,” Macron told reporters at the end of the G7 summit on Saturday, where the Western leaders agreed to consider new measures against Moscow if the situation in Ukraine did not improve.

“I will be demanding in my exchanges with Russia,” he added.

Relations between Paris and Moscow were increasingly strained under former President Francois Hollande.

Putin, 64, cancelled his last planned visit in October after Hollande accused Russia of war crimes in Syria and refused to roll out the red carpet for him.

Then during the French election campaign the Macron camp alleged Russian hacking and disinformation efforts, at one point refusing accreditation to the Russian state-funded Sputnik and RT news outlets which it said were spreading Russian propaganda and fake news.

Two days before the May 7 election runoff, Macron’s team said thousands of hacked campaign emails had been put online in a leak that one New York-based analyst said could have come from a group tied to Russian military intelligence.

Moscow and RT itself rejected allegations of meddling in the election.

Putin also offered Macron’s far-right opponent Marine Le Pen a publicity coup when he granted her an audience a month before the election’s first round.

French President Emmanuel Macron (R) speaks to Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) in the Galerie des Batailles (Gallery of Battles) as they arrive for a joint press conference at the Chateau de Versailles before the opening of an exhibition marking 300 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries in Versailles, France, May 29, 2017.

French President Emmanuel Macron (R) speaks to Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) in the Galerie des Batailles (Gallery of Battles) as they arrive for a joint press conference at the Chateau de Versailles before the opening of an exhibition marking 300 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries in Versailles, France, May 29, 2017. REUTERS/Stephane De Sakutin/Pool

Nonetheless, Russia’s ambassador to Paris, Alexander Orlov said on Monday that he expected this first meeting between the two men to be full of “smiles” and marking the beginning of “a very good and long relationship”.

Orlov, speaking on Europe 1 radio, said he believed that Macron was “much more flexible” on the Syrian question, though he did not say why he thought this. Putin would certainly invite Macron to pay a visit to Moscow, he said.

Putin’s schedule included a trip to a newly opened Russian Orthodox cathedral in Paris – a call he had been due to make for its inauguration in October, but which was cancelled along with that trip.

“CLEVER MOVE”

Macron decisively beat Le Pen, an open Putin admirer in a fraught presidential election campaign, and afterwards the Russian president said in a congratulatory message that he wanted to put mistrust aside and work with him.

Hollande’s former diplomatic adviser, Jacques Audibert, noted how Putin had been excluded from what used to be the Group of Eight nations as relations with the West soured. Meeting in a palace so soon after the G7 summit was a clever move by Macron.

“Putin likes these big symbolic things. I think it’s an excellent political opportunity, the choice of place is perfect,” he told CNews TV. “It adds a bit of grandeur to welcome Putin to Versailles.”

The Versailles exhibition commemorates a visit to France 300 years ago by Peter the Great, known for his European tastes.

A Russian official told reporters in Moscow on Friday that the meeting was an opportunity “to get a better feel for each other” and that the Kremlin expected “a frank conversation” on Syria.

While Moscow backs President Bashar al-Assad, France supports rebel groups trying to overthrow him. France has also taken a tough line on European Union sanctions on Russia, first imposed when it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and cancelled a $1.3 billion warship supply contract in 2015.

During the campaign, Macron backed expanded sanctions if there were no progress with Moscow implementing a peace accord for eastern Ukraine, where Kiev’s forces have been battling pro-Russian separatists.

Since being elected, Macron appears to have toned down the rhetoric, although he noted the two leaders still had “diverging positions” in their first phone call.

(Additional reporting by Cyril Camu; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alison Williams)

French researchers find last-ditch cure to unlock WannaCry files

A hooded man holds a laptop computer as blue screen with an exclamation mark is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

By Eric Auchard

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – French researchers said on Friday they had found a last-chance way for technicians to save Windows files encrypted by WannaCry, racing against a deadline as the ransomware threatens to start locking up victims’ computers first infected a week ago.

WannaCry, which started to sweep round the globe last Friday and has infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 nations, threatens to lock out victims who have not paid a sum of $300 to $600 within one week of infection.

A loose-knit team of security researchers scattered across the globe said they had collaborated to develop a workaround to unlock the encryption key for files hit in the global attack, which several independent security researchers have confirmed.

The researchers warned that their solution would only work in certain conditions, namely if computers had not been rebooted since becoming infected and if victims applied the fix before WannaCry carried out its threat to lock their files permanently.

The group includes Adrien Guinet, who works as a security expert, Matthieu Suiche, who is an internationally known hacker, and Benjamin Delpy, who helped out by night, in his spare time, outside his day job at the Banque de France.

Suiche has published a blog with technical details summarizing what the group of passing online acquaintances has developed. He links to a tool called Wannakey built by Guinet, the creator of the original concept.

“THE ONLY WORKABLE SOLUTION”

Guinet, a security researcher at Paris-based Quarks Lab, published the basic technique for decrypting WannaCry files on Thursday, which Delpy then figured out how to turn into a practical tool to salvage files.

Suiche, based in the United Arab Emirates and one of the world’s top security researchers, provided advice and testing to ensure the fix worked across all various versions of Windows.

Wannakey was quickly tested and shown to work on Windows 7 and older Windows versions XP and 2003, Suiche said, adding that he believes the hastily developed fix also works with Windows 2008 and Vista.

“(The method) should work with any operating system from XP to Win7,” Suiche told Reuters via direct message on Twitter.

“This is not a perfect solution. But this is so far the only workable solution to help enterprises to recover their files if they have been infected and have no back-ups,” Suiche said of network back-up and retrieval systems which allow users with infected computers to restore them after re-imaging their PCs.

Classic customer help desk procedures typically advise users reporting computer problems to reboot their machines, but fast-acting users who pulled the plug on their PCs or otherwise did not attempt to repair them can benefit, the researchers said.

(Editing by Maria Sheahan and Gareth Jones)

After Macron win, EU lawmakers eye swap plan to close Strasbourg seat

By Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Plans to move the European Union’s London-based medicines regulator to Strasbourg and push through a long-held project to close the EU parliament’s expensive second seat in the French city are gaining traction among legislators, EU officials said.

Lawmakers have been holding discreet talks on such a swap, which they hope would help eliminate French opposition to Strasbourg losing the seat, one official said.

Last week’s election win in France of pro-EU President Emmanuel Macron may further help the plan come to fruition.

MEPs convene in Strasbourg for one week every month and in Brussels for the remainder. The monthly upheaval costs the bloc 114 million euros a year, EU auditors say.

Critics have long called for the arrangement to be scrapped, but it has stayed in place largely because France would have vetoed any attempt to make the required amendment to the EU treaty.

However, since Britain voted to leave the EU, lawmakers from several groupings in the parliament have come to support the idea of a swap, a parliament official said.

A text urging to use the “excellent opportunity” of the Brexit-driven transfer of EU agencies from London to reach an agreement on a single seat of the EU parliament in Brussels was backed in April by 75 percent of EU lawmakers.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), one of the biggest EU bodies, will have to be moved from London after Britain leaves the EU.

London also hosts the European Banking Authority, which Germany’s Frankfurt is seen as likely to win over competitors Paris, Dublin, Amsterdam and other European cities.

Outgoing French President Francois Hollande chose Lille as the French candidate city to host the EU drugs regulator. Macron would have to reverse such a choice, a potentially risky move as France prepares for legislative elections in June.

Other EU countries would also have to approve EMA’s transfer to France, giving up their own ambitions. Around 40 European cities, from nearly all 27 remaining EU states, have put forward their candidacy to host EMA, with Milan and Vienna seen as the frontrunners.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

France’s Victorious Macron reminded of huge and immediate challenges

Outgoing French President Francois Hollande (R) reaches out to touch President-elect Emmanuel Macron, as they attend a ceremony to mark the end of World War II at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France,

By Michel Rose and John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – Emmanuel Macron was confronted on Monday with pressing reminders of the challenges facing him as France’s next president, even as allies and some former rivals signaled their willingness to work closely with him.

The centrist’s victory over far-rightist Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s election came as a huge relief to European Union allies who had feared another populist upheaval to follow Britain’s vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president.

“He carries the hopes of millions of French people, and of many people in Germany and the whole of Europe,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference in Berlin.

“He ran a courageous pro-European campaign, stands for openness to the world and is committed decisively to a social market economy,” the EU’s most powerful leader added, congratulating Macron on his “spectacular” election success.

But even while pledging to help France tackle unemployment, she rejected suggestions Germany should do more to support Europe’s economy by importing more from its partners to bring down its big trade surplus.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put it bluntly: “With France, we have a particular problem … The French spend too much money and they spend too much in the wrong places. This will not work over time,” Juncker said in Berlin.

The euro fell from six-month highs against the dollar on confirmation of Macron’s widely expected victory by a margin of 66 percent to 34 percent, as investors took profit on a roughly 3 percent gain for the currency since he won the first round two weeks ago.

France’s economic malaise, especially high unemployment, had undermined the popularity of outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande to the point where he decided not even to run as a candidate.

“This year, I wanted Emmanuel Macron to be here with me so that a torch could be passed on,” said Hollande, who appeared with Macron at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Paris’ Arc de Triomphe to commemorate Victory in Europe Day and the surrender of Nazi forces on May 8, 1945 at the end of World War Two.

Elsewhere in Paris, hundreds of people, led by the powerful CGT trade union, marched in protest against Macron’s planned labor reforms.

PARLIAMENTARY MAJORITY

On assuming office next Sunday as France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, the 39-year-old faces the immediate challenge of securing a majority in next month’s parliamentary election in order to have a realistic chance of implementing his plans for lower state spending, higher investment and reform of the tax, labor and pension systems.

With the two mainstream parties – the conservative Republicans and the left-wing Socialists – both failing to reach the presidential runoff, his chances of winning a majority that supports his election pledges will depend on him widening his centrist base.

The Socialists are torn between the radical left of their defeated candidate Benoit Hamon and the more centrist, pro-business branch led by former premier Manuel Valls.

On Monday, key members of the centrist arm of The Republicans appeared ready to work with Macron despite the party hierarchy calling for unity to oppose the new president and calling those that were wavering “traitors”.

“I can work in a government majority,” said Bruno Le Maire, a senior Republicans party official, who had been an aide of presidential candidate Francois Fillon.

“The situation is too serious for sectarianism and to be partisan.”

Le Pen, 48, defiantly claimed the mantle of France’s main opposition in calling on “all patriots to join us” in constituting a “new political force”.

Her tally was almost double the score that her father Jean-Marie, the last far-right candidate to make the presidential runoff, achieved in 2002, when he was trounced by the conservative Jacques Chirac.

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander, Andrew Callus, Bate Felix, Adrian Croft, Leigh Thomas, Tim Hepher, Gus Trompiz; Writing by Richard Balmforth and John Irish; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Ralph Boulton)

France fights to keep Macron email hack from distorting election

Candidates for the 2017 presidential election, Emmanuel Macron (R), head of the political movement En Marche !, or Onwards !, and Marine Le Pen, of the French National Front (FN) party, pose prior to the start of a live prime-time debate in the studios of French television station France 2, and French private station TF1 in La Plaine-Saint-Denis, near Paris. REUTERS/Eric Feferberg/Pool

By Adrian Croft and Geert De Clercq

PARIS (Reuters) – France sought to keep a computer hack of frontrunner Emmanuel Macron’s campaign emails from influencing the outcome of the country’s presidential election with a warning on Saturday it could be a criminal offence to republish the data.

Macron’s team said a “massive” hack had dumped emails, documents and campaign financing information online just before campaigning ended on Friday and France entered a quiet period which forbids politicians from commenting on the leak.

The data leak emerged as polls predicted Macron, a former investment banker and economy minister, was on course for a comfortable victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s election, with the last surveys showing his lead widening to around 62 percent to 38.

“On the eve of the most important election for our institutions, the commission calls on everyone present on internet sites and social networks, primarily the media, but also all citizens, to show responsibility and not to pass on this content, so as not to distort the sincerity of the ballot,” the French election commission said in a statement on Saturday.

However, the commission – which supervises the electoral process – may find it difficult to enforce its rules in an era where people get much of their news online, information flows freely across borders and many users are anonymous.

French media covered the hack in various ways, with left-leading Liberation giving it prominence on its website, but television news channels opting not to mention it.

Le Monde newspaper said on its website it would not publish the content of any of the leaked documents before the election, partly because the huge amount of data meant there was not enough time to report on it properly, but also because the dossiers had been published on purpose 48 hours before the election with the clear aim of affecting the vote.

“If these documents contain revelations, Le Monde will of course publish them after having investigated them, respecting our journalistic and ethical rules, and without allowing ourselves to be exploited by the publishing calendar of anonymous actors,” it said.

As the #Macronleaks hashtag buzzed around social media on Friday night, Florian Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen’s National Front party, tweeted “Will Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately kept silent?”

DESTABILISATION

As much as 9 gigabytes of data purporting to be documents from the Macron campaign were posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but Macron’s political movement said in a statement the hack was an attempt to destabilize democracy and to damage the party.

En Marche! said the leaked documents dealt with the normal operations of a campaign and included some information on campaign accounts. It said the hackers had mixed false documents with authentic ones to “sow doubt and disinformation.”

Sunday’s election is seen as the most important in France for decades, with two diametrically opposed views of Europe and the country’s place in the world at stake.

Le Pen would close borders and quit the euro currency, while Macron wants closer European cooperation and an open economy.

Voters in some French overseas territories and the Americas were due to cast their ballots on Saturday, a day before voting in France itself. The first polling stations to open at 1000 GMT were in Saint Pierre and Miquelon, islands off Canada.

Others in French Guiana in South America; Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean; the South Pacific islands of French Polynesia and French citizens living elsewhere in the Americas were also due to vote on Saturday.

In France, police union Alternative Police warned in a statement that there was a risk of violence on election day by activists of the far-right or far-left.

Extreme-right student activists burst into the office of Macron’s political movement in the southeastern city of Lyon on Friday evening, setting off smoke grenades and scattering false bank notes bearing Macron’s picture, police said.

France is the latest nation to see a major election overshadowed by allegations of manipulation through cyber hacking after U.S. intelligence agencies said in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of parties tied to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to influence the election on behalf of Republican Donald Trump.

Vitali Kremez, director of research with New York-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, told Reuters his review indicated that APT 28, a group tied to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak.

Macron’s campaign has previously complained about attempts to hack its emails, blaming Russian interests in part for the cyber attacks.

The Kremlin has denied it was behind any such attacks, although Macron’s camp renewed complaints against Russian media and a hackers’ group operating in Ukraine.

(Additional reporting by Bate Felix, Andrew Callus, Myriam Rivet, and Michel Rose in Paris, Catherine Lagrange in Lyon, Jim Finkle in Toronto and Eric Auchard in Frankfurt; Editing by Alexander Smith)

French amphibious carrier visits Japan ahead of Pacific show of power

French amphibious assault ship Mistral (L) arrives at Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force's Sasebo naval base in Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture, Japan April 29, 2017, ahead of joint exercises with U.S., British and Japanese forces in waters off Guam. REUTERS/Nobuhiro Kubo

By Nobuhiro Kubo

SASEBO (Reuters) – As tension spikes on the Korean peninsula, a French amphibious assault carrier sailed into Japan’s naval base of Sasebo on Saturday ahead of drills that risk upsetting China, which faces U.S. pressure to rein in North Korea’s arms programs.

The Mistral will lead exercises next month near Guam, along with forces from Japan, the United States and Britain, practicing amphibious landings around Tinian, an island about 2,500 km (1,553 miles) south of the Japanese capital of Tokyo.

The drills, involving 700 troops, were planned before Saturday’s test-firing of a ballistic missile by North Korea, in defiance of world pressure, in what would be its fourth successive unsuccessful missile test since March.

Japan and the United States are worried by China’s efforts to extend its influence beyond its coastal waters and the South China Sea by acquiring power-projecting aircraft carriers, a concern shared by France, which controls several Pacific islands, including New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

Even as they seek stronger economic ties with China, both France and Britain, which has two navy helicopters aboard the Mistral, are deepening security cooperation with Japan, a close U.S. ally that has Asia’s second-strongest navy after China.

The Mistral forms part of an amphibious task force mission, the Jeanne d’Arc, that is “a potent support to French diplomacy,” the country’s defence ministry said in a statement.

Officials and children’s welcome dances greeted the Mistral in Sasebo, on the western island of Kyushu, a major naval base for Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF) and the U.S. Navy.

The Mistral, which left France in February, can carry up to 35 helicopters and four landing barges, besides several hundred soldiers. It will stay in Sasebo until May 5.

This month China launched its first domestically-built aircraft carrier. It joined the Liaoning, bought from Ukraine in 1998, which led a group of Chinese warships through waters south of Japan in December.

China’s military ambitions, however, have been overshadowed in recent weeks by tension on the Korean peninsula as Pyongyang conducts long-range missile tests, and prepares for a possible sixth nuclear test.

“We did not expect the start of our visit to coincide with a North Korean missile launch, France’s ambassador to Japan Thierry Dana said on the Mistral’s bridge. “Cooperation between our four nations in upholding laws, peace and stability in the region will display our readiness to deal with North Korea,” he added.

In a show of force, the United States has sent the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to nearby waters, where it will join the USS Michigan, a guided missile submarine that docked in South Korea on Tuesday.

The Carl Vinson entered the Sea of Japan on Saturday, where it completed naval drills with two Japanese warships dispatched from Sasebo, an MSDF spokesman said.

(Reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

French intelligence says Assad forces carried out sarin attack

FILE PHOTO: A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah/File Photo

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – French intelligence has concluded that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on April 4 in northern Syria and that Assad or members of his inner circle ordered the strike, a declassified report showed.

The chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun killed scores of people, according to a war monitor, Syrian opposition groups and Western countries. It prompted the United States to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base, its first deliberate assault on the Assad government in the six-year-old conflict.

Assad has said in two media interviews since April 4 that the evidence of a poison gas attack was false and denied his government had ever used chemical weapons.

The six-page French document, seen by Reuters and drawn up by France’s military and foreign intelligence services – said it reached its conclusion based on samples they had obtained from the impact strike on the ground and a blood sample from a victim.

“We know, from a certain source, that the process of fabrication of the samples taken is typical of the method developed in Syrian laboratories,” Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters after presenting the findings to the cabinet.

“This method is the signature of the regime and it is what enables us to establish the responsibility of the attack. We know because we kept samples from previous attacks that we were able to use for comparison.”

Among the elements found in the samples were hexamine, a hallmark of sarin produced by the Syrian government, according to the report.

It said the findings matched the results of samples obtained by French intelligence, including an unexploded grenade, from an attack in Saraqib on April 29, 2013, which Western powers have accused the Assad government of carrying out.

“This production process is developed by Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) for the regime,” the report said.

The United States on Monday blacklisted 271 employees belonging to the agency.

Syria agreed in September 2013 to destroy its entire chemical weapons program under a deal negotiated with the United States and Russia after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.

The report said that based on its assessments, there were “serious doubts on the accuracy, completeness and sincerity of the dismantlement of Syria’s chemical arsenal.”

SIX WARPLANE STRIKES

The report, which lists some 140 suspected chemical attacks in Syria since 2012, also said intelligence services were aware of a Syrian government Sukhoi 22 warplane that had struck six times on Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 and that samples taken from the ground were consistent with an airborne projectile that had munitions loaded with sarin.

“The French intelligence services consider that only Bashar al-Assad and some of his most influential entourage can give the order to use chemical weapons,” the report said.

It added that jihadist groups in the area in Idlib province did not have the capacity to develop and launch such an attack and that Islamic State was not in the region.

Assad’s assertion that the attack was fabricated was “not credible” given the mass flows of casualties in a short space of time arriving in Syrian and Turkish hospitals as well as the sheer quantity of social media posts and video showing people with neurotoxic symptoms, said the report.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on April 19 that sarin or a similar banned toxin was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack, but it is not mandated to assign blame.

Russia, which backs Assad in the conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, has said the gas was released by an air strike on a poison gas storage depot controlled by rebels.

“The Kremlin thinks as before that the only way to restore the truth of what happened in Idlib is impartial international investigation. We regret that OPCW restrains so far from such an investigation,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the French report.

A senior French diplomatic source said Paris had passed the report on to its partners and would continue to push for a probe.

Moscow was attempting to discredit the OPCW, the source said: “There is a propaganda effort by Russia to say that the OPCW’s work is not credible.”

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Callus, Pravin Char and Sonya Hepinstall)