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LAST UPDATE | 13 Dec 2018
FRENCH POLICE SHOT and killed a suspected gunman who had been on the run since killing three people at Strasbourg’s popular Christmas market on Tuesday.
The gunman who killed three people at a Christmas market in Strasbourg was killed last night, as the Islamic State jihadist group claimed him as one of its “soldiers”.
More than 700 French security forces had been hunting for 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt since the bloodshed on Tuesday night – the latest in a string of jihadist attacks to rock France.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said three police tried to question Chekatt after spotting him on the street in the Neudorf area of the northeastern French city where he grew up, but he opened fire.
“They immediately returned fire and neutralised the assailant,” Castaner said.
A source close to the investigation said a woman spotted a man fitting Chekatt’s description with a wounded arm on Thursday afternoon and alerted authorities, who sealed off the area and used a helicopter with thermal cameras to hunt for the suspect.
People gathered at the police cordon where Chekatt was shot and applauded, some shouting “bravo!”, a source said.
“It’s really a huge relief,” said Alain Fontanel, a local official in the mayor’s office, describing the anxiety that locals had felt since Tuesday’s attack.
“We didn’t really feel very safe,” one 18-year-old local named Arthur told AFP.
‘Great European city’
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed “the solidarity of the whole country” towards the victims as he arrived for a European summit in Brussels.
“It is not only France that has been hit … but a great European city as well,” he added, referring to the seat of the European parliament in the eastern French city that lies on the border with Germany.
Chekatt, who lived in a rundown apartment block a short drive from the city centre, was flagged by French security forces in 2015 as a possible Islamic extremist.
He was believed to have been wounded after exchanging fire with soldiers during the attack, but managed to escape and had not been seen since fleeing the scene on Tuesday.
Police in several other countries had joined the hunt for the career criminal with at least 27 convictions in four European states.
Officers who had already detained Chekatt’s parents and two brothers on Wednesday took a fifth person into custody for questioning on Thursday.
Plea to yellow vests
France has been hit by a wave of attacks from people claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda or IS since 2015, which have claimed the lives of nearly 250 people, according to an AFP toll.
It is also not the first time a Christmas market has been targeted in Europe.
In 2016, a jihadist attacked a Christmas market in Berlin and went on the run through the Netherlands and France before being shot and killed three days later in northern Italy.
Defiant local authorities insisted the Strasbourg Christmas market would reopen as usual on Friday.
As police hunted Chekatt, the French government urged “yellow vest” protesters angry over French economic reforms not to hold another round of demonstrations this weekend, given the strain on the country’s security forces.
Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux called on the anti-government protesters to be “reasonable” after nearly four weeks of often violent demonstrations that have led the government to offer a range of financial relief to low earners.
“Our security forces have been deployed extensively these past few weeks,” Griveaux told CNews television.
“It would be better if everyone could go about their business calmly on Saturday, before the year-end celebrations with their families, instead of demonstrating and putting our security forces to work once again.”
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To be honest it beats the alternative – having fake brands which really take you out of the film. Nothing worse than a movie character cracking open a can just labelled “beer”
Ya, the movie world is filled with mind reading barmen aswell. I’d love to be able to walk into a bar and order a “Beer” and get what I want every time!
Go to some restaurants in Italy and that’s what happens. A two page list of wine with two beers at the bottom called small and large.
The product placements in Wayne’s World were satirical and totally over the top for the sake of comedy, this example doesn’t really fit in with the rest!
If this article is giving you a headache, Rob Hunt, you should take two Nuprin.
Ah, Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
Or you could try JIMPRIN, a generic version that may be even better!
JIMPRIN! Almost made in Ireland!!
James Bond Skyfall with Heinekin and the Sony laptops.
I think the icing on the skyfall sell out cake was…
M:What was that?
Moneypenny: Volkswagen beetles I believe ma’m
I thought for a second she was going to add ‘what I can’t believe is they start from only €16K’
In fairness Bond has a noble heritage of schlepping. In Goldfinger You could have a drinking game out of the amount of times Sean Connery during his golf march wit Aurich Goldfinger says the word Slazenger.
I Lol’d at that
I hate product placement just about as much as I love a nice ice filled glass of Bulmers on a sunny day…
The movie producers and companies are out to make money, yet I think this speaks more to human beings and their desire to want something that they see in a movie, regardless of how useless that thing may be.
Have you seen the Product Placement in Fair City :) woaaaaa
Too true they’re shameless!
Some other company were offered the placement in ‘Castaway’, wouldn’t take it because they thought the plane crash would be bad for business.
The guy who filmed castaway was a former marine who served his time in Vietnam with the CEO of FEDEX.
At the time the board did not want the company to go ahead and feature in the movie but the CEO managed to push it through, , From memory it is the only actual airline ever to have a plane crash.
There’s a fascinating development in product placement. A company called Morris’s have developed technology which allows post production placement.
Essentially this means that anything which as ever been filmed wether yesterday or 50 years ago, can have products placed in it.
They have a showreel which includes a Kellogg’s cereal on the breakfast table of a Cosby show episode which predates the product by about five years.
http://www.mirriad.com/tag/digital-product-placement/
This means placement can be sold in different territories for different products.
There was a recent episode of how I met your mother which featured one of the characters carrying a shopping bag. The space on the bag was sold multiple times (down to zip code level) by individual broadcasters & where it wasn’t sold. It was blank with no disruption to the scene.
The Truman show. A very very very large product ad
What a moany article.
Are you seriously suggesting there should be no name brand products in films? Yeah, that’ll make it more natural.
There was nothing unnatural about any of these products. Imagine, a named car in a film about… Cars?!
Sharon’s stones ” Toothless Grin” in basic instinct
Remember a blatant one for Nike, in Heath Ledger’s ‘A Knights Tale’. Crap film anyway but that plug was shameless.
Nike not capitalizing… While they did only release 1500 (not 1000 fact check anyone?) pairs they also sold them in a bidding process for $3,500-10,000 a piece.
That’s a BMW Z8 from The World Is Not Enough pictured, not the Z3 from Goldeneye.
I am sick to death of the Apple’s product placement. iphone & MACs everywhere. And if the ‘baddie’ in the tv seriesbor movie takes out his phone, it looks like a blackberry.
The most blatant were Cheerios back in the late 70s, the cereal boxes were framed and lit better than the actors
I’m surprised the movie jack and jill with Adam Sandler was left out of this list…. Worst product placements I’ve ever seen. The ones above aren’t too bad… The whole movie was based on trying to get a Dunkin Donuts commercial made.
Because the film was so bad that no one saw it and the placements.
I’m glad no one has seen it. Horrible money grabbing piece of crap.
The picture of Bond was in Azerbaijan in The World is not Enough standing next to the BMW z8 the z3 roadster was in Goldeneye :)
Don’t forget Mac & Me, an entire movie made to promote MacDonalds
don’t get this article?? product placement is all the rage these days to even in lot of tv shows as well, and animated programmes like southpark
Mission impossible in Dubai. BMWs new 1 and 3 series and X5 used alot! Also in up in the air, American Airlines an Hilton are heavily used and advertised but I heard this was for the free use of the hotels and planes
Surely men in black for ray ban has to be there.
The movie Mac & Me should definitely be on that list. It’s an ET rip-off where the alien character spends his time consuming MacDonalds, Skittles and Coca Cola. It even has a 5 minute dance scene in MacDonalds in which Ronald MacDonald joins in on the fun.
Don’t. Forget the subtle method of thejournal.ie to include newstories which are actually adverts…. how dare they provide a free service and try to recoup costs through advertising … don’t forget talkshows like opera and the late late show. I’m also lead to believe that the rte news is sponsored by the sitting government. :)
They’ve nothing on Microsoft, I mean Hawaii, Five O though.
The Miller truck I bad boy’s 2 was so bad just a long dramatic sweeping camera shot of the Miller truck pass in slow motion
In the movie Anger Management, a movie set in NYC that was released shortly after 9/11, you can see several ads for U.S army recruitment.
What about Heineken in skyfall?
Product Placement has been around for years and always will be.
Watched ‘In The Heat Of The Night’ last night and Coca Cola featured prominently, didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the film though and the funding helps get the films made.
Smoking though does bother me, shameless placement in scenes you don’t see anymore, such as people smoking in offices and bars etc and really should be stamped out.
It is easy enough to get any product placement for the goodies in white hats…….try getting some for the the guys in the black hats, sadly the baddies are not really what the advertisers seem to want .
Oh dingleberrycity.com would never bother with product placement.
Transformers, General Motors, Xbox, Nokia, EBay, Burger King amongst others, and numerous references to Michael Bays other films….
Burger King in first Iron Man
The BMW z3 wasn’t in Goldeneye, it was in The World is Not Enough :)
What about Paddy Whiskey in On TheWaterfront?
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