It was about 7:50pm in the narrow shopping lanes of the historic centre of Strasbourg, the picturesque city known as France’s “capital of Christmas”. Streets were packed with locals and tourists gathered under festive lights shaped like gingerbread men carrying candy canes.

Strasbourg shooting: gunman was listed as potential terror threat Read more

Suddenly, in a lane near the wooden huts of France’s most famous Christmas market, shots rang out. A man dressed in black walked down the shopping street first firing a gun into the crowd on rue des Orfèvres, then attacking passersby with a knife.

For several minutes, he ran through narrows streets shooting and stabbing people amid the Christmas trees and the giant teddy decorations. According to the prosecutor, he shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he went.

“It lasted for minutes, but in my head it felt like hours,” said a 20-year-old waiter, shivering as he recalled the scene in a street near Strasbourg’s riverside. “I was standing outside our restaurant having a quick cigarette break before the dinner service when I heard one bang and then another. I turned around and suddenly people were screaming and running and I saw a man had been shot.

“It wasn’t so much fear that I felt, but shock. I helped give first aid. There were nurses who were in the restaurant who came to help. The customers were rushed towards the back of the restaurant to keep safe. There was a lot of noise. Police officers were shouting to get inside.”

One onlooker described “a moment of panic, with everyone running”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A policeman on patrol in the centre of Strasbourg the day after the shootings. Photograph: Xinhua/Barcroft Images

The alleged gunman, born and raised in Strasbourg and sentenced 27 times in France, Germany and Switzerland for robbery and violence, had been flagged to authorities in prison for being radicalised, the prosecutor said. But as police chased the gunman through the centre of Strasbourg they did not know his identity.

Over a period of about 10 minutes, he ran through central Strasbourg’s central shopping streets past wooden stalls selling mulled wine, stopping to fire at and stab passersby at three different locations in the shadow of the city’s famous cathedral where the Christmas market attracts millions of visitors each year.

The man also opened fire on patrolling soldiers dressed in military fatigues from Operation Sentinelle, the army protection operation put in place after the first terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher grocery in January 2015. The soldiers fired back and the gunman was wounded in the hand, the prosector said. Police also opened fire.

Just after 8pm, about 10 minutes after the shooting spree began, the wounded gunman hailed a taxi to the Neudorf area in the south of the city. He didn’t give an address, the prosecutor said, telling the driver only that he would show him the way when he got there.

Play Video 0:53 Gunman on the run after deadly shooting at Strasbourg's Christmas market – video

On the 10-minute journey, still carrying a gun and wounded and bleeding, he boasted to the driver that he had committed an attack in the centre of Strasbourg and justified his actions. He said he has shot into the crowd and killed 10 people. In fact, at that point, as emergency services rushed with stretchers into the city centre’s narrow streets, the attack had left two people dead and one brain-dead in a coma. Six others were fighting for their lives with serious injuries and another six were injured.

On the taxi journey, the gunman also reportedly bragged that he had a grenade at his home. It was this detail that eventually would help the police identify the gunman they were looking for. After the taxi driver had dropped off the gunman in Neudorf, he drove straight to a local police station to report what had happened.

The police were able to make a connection with a police search that morning that took place at about 11am. Police acting on a warrant from a judge in a case of violence had gone to arrest a man and search his flat in a modern block on a housing estate. The suspect was not at home but they had found a grenade, a gun, ammunition and four hunting knives. Prosecutors said that suspect, named by authorities as Chérif Chekatt, would begin a city centre shooting spree that evening.

After the taxi driver’s testimony, police poured into the Neudorf area, and the nearby border to Germany was monitored, but more than 12 hours later, at Wednesday lunchtime, the gunman had not yet been found.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Flowers, candles and a sign reading: ‘Tribute to the victims - I am Strasbourg’ at the scene of one of the shootings. Photograph: Ronald Wittek/EPA

In the hours after the attack – with the gunman still on the loose – the city centre of Strasbourg had been put on lockdown.

In the city centre, Thibault, 21, a business and marketing student, was outside with a group of friends having a cigarette near a bar in the cathedral area at about 8pm when the attack started. “There was a man who had seen the gunman and he came running at us, shouting to get inside,” he said. “We went up to the second floor of the bar and dozens of us hid there. It was confusing and scary. The mood here now is morose. When you think about it, perhaps it isn’t that surprising. We knew this city could one day be a target.”

Four of the alleged gunman’s family members were being questioned by police on Wednesday as the hunt for him continued. Police were stationed across southern Strasbourg and at key road points – the government could not rule out that the gunman had crossed into Germany.

On the Grandes Arcades shopping street, one of the places where the gunman shot and stabbed the crowd, there was a police cordon near a big red Santa’s postbox for children. Behind the cordon, there was a discarded foil blanket in which a survivor had been wrapped by emergency services. Someone had placed a white rose at the police tape.

At the city’s hospital, authorities said victims were mostly French and from the Strasbourg area but that foreigners were also among them. The victims were aged between 20 and 70, and counted no children.

Near Strasbourg cathedral, determined tourists milled past armed police. At the tourist office, one French pensioner said: “It’s so sad, just before Christmas. But there have always been crazy people around and there always will be.”

Outside a local bakery, staff had chalked a sign of solidarity on a blackboard. It said: “We are Strasbourg.”