• French police shoot tear gas amid exchanges with irate protestors.
• 69 y/o French guy with a lengthy criminal history has been taken into custody.
• Darmanin instructed police to protect Kurdish and Turkish diplomatic missions.

Outside a Kurdish community center in the heart of Paris, where a gunman earlier killed three people and injured four others in an incident with suspected racist overtones, French police on Friday shot tear gas amid exchanges with irate protestors.

Kurds made up all three fatalities within and close to the Kurdish Cultural Center Ahmet-Kaya on Rue d’Enghien, the center’s attorney told Media.

A 69-year-old French guy with a lengthy criminal history who is the alleged attacker has been taken into custody.

He was not part of any far-right groups monitored by the police, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told journalists at the scene.

“He (the suspect) clearly wanted to take it out on foreigners,” Darmanin said.

During Darmanin’s visit to the scene of the attack on Friday, there were altercations with dozens of demonstrators, the majority of whom were from the Kurdish diaspora.

Although the shooting has not been classified as a terrorist assault, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau earlier on Friday stated that authorities are not completely ruling out the possibility that the shooting had “racial motivations.”

“When it comes to racist motivations, of course these elements are part of the investigation that was just launched,” Beccuau said.

French President Emmanuel Macron deplored the “heinous attack” where “the Kurds of France have been the target,” in a Twitter post on Thursday.

“My thoughts to the victims, to the people who are fighting to live, to their families and loved ones. My gratitude to our law enforcement forces for their courage and calmness,” Macron said.

Following the attack, police have been instructed to guard Kurdish sites and Turkish diplomatic facilities around France, according to Darmanin.

Additionally, he has pleaded with the French president and prime minister to support Kurdish demonstrators.

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