One person was killed and four others were injured when gunshots were fired from a vehicle outside Paris on Friday, according to local authorities.

Interior Minister ⁠Laurent ​Nunez said the shooting was "clearly a terrorist crime."

He said shots were fired at the total of three locations in the towns of Trappes and La Verriere, which are located about 20 kilometers (13 miles) west of the French capital, close to Versailles. The "rampage" lasted for 15 minutes, according to the minister.

Nunez said the shooter fired "what appears to have been a military-grade weapon, or at least an automatic weapon."

Three of the wounded remain in critical condition.

Commenting on the shooting, President Emmanuel Macron said the attack "marks a ⁠turning ​point" for France.

"What ‌happened today was a terrorist ​and ⁠racist attack," he told reporters, noting that the victims were targeted due to their religion and the color of their skin.

What do we know about the suspect?

Shortly after the Friday attack, authorities detained a man in the neighboring town of Coignieres and took him into police custody.

The authorities later identified the suspect as Kevin T., born in 1987. They said the alleged shooter already had a criminal record. 

France's anti-terrorism prosecutor said the authorities found a Sten Gun — a British-made WWII-era submachine gun — and a tear gas grenade in his car.  The alleged shooter had also booby-trapped his apartment, according to the authorities.

Mayor: 'Miracle' that more were not killed

"An individual fired shots from his vehicle at multiple people along his route," the mayor of Trappes, Ali Rabeh, wrote on social media.

He later told French broadcaster BFM TV that one of the locations at which shots were fired was a playground.

"It is a miracle that there were not more victims," he said.

Rabeh said the person killed was of African origin, while one of those critically wounded was of North African origin.

The mayor also told reporters the attack had "racist, likely Islamophobic, overtones."

 “This is probably one of the first attempted mass killings motivated by Islamophobia and racism,” he said.

A 12-year-old girl injured in the attack

Aurore Berge, the French minister in charge of gender equality and antidiscrimination, said a 12-year-old girl was very seriously injured in the incident.

"If a racist motive is established, I hope that the whole nation will stand alongside the residents of Trappes, La Verriere, and the victims. We cannot tolerate even the slightest racist remark in the French republic," she said.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu called the incident "very serious" and said that "all available resources of the security forces and judicial authorities have been fully mobilized."

He added that France's National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (Pnat) is monitoring the situation.

Pnat itself said it had opened an investigation into "murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise, with the aggravating circumstance that the acts were committed on the basis of the victim's actual or perceived membership of a specific race, ethnicity, nation or religion."

France shooting: What else do we know?

The shooting came as France braces for yet another day of protests against the high cost of living on Saturday, with major museums in Paris and other major cities closing their doors and the government deploying a significantly larger security presence.

"We are not talking about ​a nice protest," Interior Minister Nunez told reporters, announcing the deployment of 70,000 security personnel. "We are ​ready ⁠tomorrow to be extremely firm ⁠and ​not tolerate anything."

France has also seen a spate of Islamist terrorist attacks in recent years and, although the number of incidents has fallen, authorities have warned that risks remain.

The town of Trappes has experienced its own share of tension, with a local teacher reporting receiving threats after saying that the state did not do enough to protect Samuel Paty, a teacher in another Paris suburb who was beheaded by a radical Islamist in 2020 after he showed his class caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

There was no immediate suggestion that Friday's shooting was linked either to the current protests or Islamist terrorism.

Edited by: Alex Berry

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