PARIS, July 1: France’s army chief of staff resigned on Tuesday two days after a soldier wounded 17 people by mistakenly firing live ammunition into the crowd during a display at an army base, the presidency said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy promised severe punishment following the shooting, which happened as hundreds of parents and children watched a mock hostage rescue operation on Sunday near the southwestern city of Carcassonne.

“The president of the republic, head of the armed forces, has accepted the offer of resignation by General Bruno Cuche, chief of staff of the army,” Sarkozy’s office said in a statement on Tuesday.

“This powerful gesture follows the tragedy that occurred last Sunday in Carcassonne,” the presidency said.

Cuche, 60, served as a commander of Nato-led forces in Kosovo in the 1990s.

He resigns after two years as French army chief of staff.

Fifteen bystanders including five children were wounded in the shooting as were two soldiers. A three-year-old boy was in serious but stable condition after taking bullets in the heart and in the arm.

The 28-year-old sergeant who fired the shots from his assault rifle was being held in custody and was expected to be charged on Tuesday with causing unintentional injury.

The sergeant, who was officially suspended from duty on Tuesday, has been described as an experienced soldier with no history of psychological problems.

Prosecutors said he had been carrying a live cartridge in his pocket, wrongly left there after a recent military operation, and had used it to reload his rifle instead of the blank magazine.

General Cuche had ordered an army command investigation to establish the circumstances of the shooting, with a four-star general due to report back within a week on the chain of responsibilities.

But Defence Minister Herve Morin contacted Cuche to ask for immediate sanctions, saying the “tragic accident” had revealed “serious shortfalls” in army safety procedures.

“The minister asked the army chief of staff, without waiting for the outcome of the judicial and army command investigations, to put forward...immediate sanctions for those involved in the dysfunctions observed,” a defence ministry statement said on Tuesday.

After visiting the wounded children in hospital on Monday, Sarkozy called the shooting the result of “unacceptable negligence”, for which he promised a “rapid and severe response”.

Sarkozy’s office said he was “closely following the various investigations” and that “he intends for the armed forces to draw full consequences in terms of organisation and operations.”—AFP