TREBES: A French police officer who offered himself up to an extremist gunman in exchange for a hostage has died, raising the death toll in the attack in southern France to four.

He was honoured on Saturday as a national hero of “exceptional courage and selflessness.” Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame, 44, was among the first officers to respond to the attack Friday on the supermarket in the southern French town of Trebes.

Beltrame, who joined the elite police special forces in 2003 and served in Iraq in 2005, had organised a training session in the Aude region in December for just such a hostage situation. At the time, he armed his officers with paintball guns, according to the Depeche du Midi newspaper.

“We want to be as close to real conditions as possible,” he said then.

But when he went inside the supermarket, he gave up his own weapon and volunteered himself in exchange for a female hostage.

Unbeknownst to the Morocco-born hostage-taker, he left his cellphone on so police outside could hear what was happening in the store. They stormed the building when they heard gunshots, officials said. Beltrame was fatally wounded.

In addition to the four people killed by the gunman in his rampage Friday, the attacker was killed by police. Fifteen others were injured.

“Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much,” President Emmanuel Macron said. “In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero.”

French police and soldiers have been a prime target of attacks by extremists, with 10 killed in recent years, including Beltrame.

Other victims include three soldiers killed near Toulouse in 2012, three police officers shot to death in 2015, a police couple killed in their home in 2016 and a police officer killed on Paris’ Champs-Elysees in 2017. Dozens of others have been wounded.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2018