What you need to know about the deadly escape of French prisoner “La Mouche”

A manhunt involving hundreds of law enforcement officers continued Wednesday for a fugitive prisoner nicknamed “The Fly” and machine-gun-wielding accomplices who facilitated the convicted felon’s escape in ambushing a prison transport van at a toll booth and shooting dead two guards, authorities said.

International police organization Interpol issued a global red alert against the fugitive identified by authorities as Mohmed Amra, 30, after French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said authorities feared Amra had fled the country.

“We are investing considerable resources, we are making a lot of progress,” Damanin said in an interview with French radio RTL.

French President Emmanuel Macron declared on the social network X: “Everything is being done to find the perpetrators of this crime.”

“We will be uncompromising,” Macron added, calling the escape “a shock for all of us.”

The escape occurred Tuesday at a toll booth near Rouen, about 135 kilometers north of Paris, when a white van carrying Amra from court to a penitentiary was ambushed, according to French authorities.

The attack was captured on security video, officials said.

At least five prison guards were escorting Amra when their van was rammed head-on by a stolen car at the toll booth and men wearing balaclavas to hide their faces opened fire on the van with automatic weapons, authorities said.

Two of the officers were killed and three were injured when the attackers pushed Amra, a suspected drug gang leader, from the van into a waiting vehicle that took him from the scene, officials said.

The attack lasted only two minutes, French media reported.

As hundreds of law enforcement officers scoured the country searching for Amra and her accomplices, investigators reviewed CCTV footage from dozens of security cameras near the toll plaza to try to identify those involved in this daring escape. The attack was also captured on nearby vehicle dashboard cameras, officials said.

Amra was found guilty of burglary on May 10 by the Evreuz court and was detained at the Val de Reuil remand center, according to Laure Beccuau, of the Paris prosecutor’s office. Beccuau told reporters that Amra was also recently charged with kidnapping leading to homicide.

Amra’s lawyer, Hugues Vigier, told French broadcaster BFMTV that the escape took place less than a week after Amra was caught trying to escape from prison by sawing the bars of his cell.

Vigier called Tuesday’s violent escape “inexcusable” and “senseless.”

“That doesn’t correspond to the impression I had of him,” Vigier said on BFMTV.

This escape is the most brazen to occur in France since 2018, when the notorious gangster Redoine Faid escaped from Réau prison using a hijacked helicopter whose pilot was forced to land in the courtyard of prison by heavily armed accomplices. Faid was recaptured approximately three months after his escape.