WATCH: Paris airport gunman shot dead after wrestling with soldier
WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT: Video from Saturday's suspected terrorist attack has emerged showing the moment an alleged Islamic extremist was shot dead at Paris' Orly airport.
It shows the attacker, Ziyed Ben Belgacem, grabbing the soldier around the shoulders as her companion patrols slightly ahead.
For a few moments, almost no one reacts. One passenger rolls a suitcase past the hostage soldier and the second soldier continues on his way.
Then, suddenly, people start backing away as the attacker pulls his hostage toward them.
The gunman shouted: "I am here to die for Allah - there will be deaths", before attempting to take the gun.
Belgacem approached the female soldier from behind before desperately trying to grab her gun in a frenzied wrestle. Source: AP
A French female soldier and Islamist engaged in a life-and-death tussle in Paris' Orly airport on Saturday. Source: AP
Belgacem was shot dead within three minutes during a standoff with the companion and another soldier.
The footage shows him trying to wrestle away the first soldier's gun as he approached the crowd, but he was killed before he could fire the weapon.
No one was injured at the airport.
The airport was completely shut down after the attack. Source: AP
The attacker
Ben Belgacem, a Frenchman born to Tunisian parents, was known to police and intelligence agencies.
He had been investigated for links to radical Islam and was jailed for five years in 2001 for armed robbery, and again in 2009 for drug dealing.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Ben Belgacem had shown signs in 2011 and 2012 of having radicalised in jail.
Molins said the attacker appeared to have become caught up in a "sort of headlong flight that became more and more destructive".
Belgacem is believed by French police to have been a career criminal. Source: AP
Travel chaos
All flights in and out of Orly airport were suspended following the attack, but by Sunday morning traffic had nearly returned to normal.
A spokesman for the Paris airport authority said that the backlog of travellers stranded by the chaos had been cleared and that passengers were experiencing only "slight delays".
Around 3,000 passengers were evacuated from the South terminal, while elite police teams secured it and swept it for possible explosives. Those at the western terminal were confined to the building.
Armed police and the bomb squad combed the area. Source: AP
Around 3000 people were evacuated from the airport. Source: AP
