AFP/PHILIPPE HUGUEN | Gendarmes block a road near a travellers' camp that was the site of a shooting on August 25.

Four people were killed and three others were seriously wounded in a shooting on Tuesday at a travellers' camp in Roye, in the Somme region of northern France, the local prefecture said.

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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said a man entered the camp and "cold-bloodedly killed a six-month old baby, a woman and a man". The shooter was injured when security forces intervened.

"A man of the community, pretty drunk, opened fire on a man in his forties, his stepdaughter, a toddler," Cazeneuve said on French channel BFM TV, without further clarification on what sparked the shooting.

Another toddler and a police officer, as well as the gunman, were seriously wounded before the assailant was neutralised and arrested, a police spokesman said.

"The police had no other way to control the frenzied man than shooting him in the legs," Cazeneuve added.

Cazeneuve met with the families of the police to show his support.

French President François Hollande also expressed his solidarity with the victims’ families.

French police had been called to a camp in the Somme department earlier in the day, where they were shot at and exchanged fire, the president’s statement said.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS, AP, AFP)

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