Paris police hunt gunman after shootings at newspaper office and bank

Dozens of French police backed up by a helicopter and gendarmes are still searching for a gunman who on Tuesday, opened fire with a hunting rifle inside the offices of the left-wing newspaper Libération, leaving a staff member seriously injured, and was last seen on the Champs-Élysées.

The man, described by one witness as "serene and determined" caused panic as he criss-crossed the city using public transport and hijacking a private car. Detectives said they were combing the whole of west Paris for a "large built man with a shaved head in his forties" who they said appeared to have been behind three previous attacks including one at a television news channel.

He strode into the Libération entrance hall at about 10.15am and shot twice before fleeing on foot. He was then seen in the business district of La Défense, firing at the headquarters of France's second-largest bank, Société Génerale.

A motorist whose vehicle was car-jacked by the gunman told police he was "taken hostage" not far from La Defence shortly after shots were fired at the bank. He told detectives he was "threatened and forced to take the armed man in his car". The driver said he dropped the gunman off near the Avenue de Champs-Elysées.

The attack at Libération, near Place de la République in the north-east of the French capital, came days after the armed man broke into the offices of the 24-hour television news channel BFMTV.

The gunman, wearing green trainers, a black cap, black trousers and a sleeveless padded jacket, appeared in front of Philippe Antoine, chief editor at BFMTV. Throwing two cartridges on the ground, he said: "The next time, I won't miss you", and ran off. "It was all over in seconds," Antoine said.

The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, said: "The man is fleeing and poses a real danger. We will do everything we can to catch him."

French papers said police had matched the bullet cases found at Libération with those left at BFMTV, and security camera footage from the TV station and Libération confirmed it was the same man.

A journalist who saw the security video after Friday's attack at BFMTV said: "He held his gun, it was a gun with a long barrel. He was wearing black gloves."

Fabrice Rousselot, editorial director at Libération, said the man had shot twice. "He said nothing. He came in, he shot and he left as he had arrived."

Libération's editor, Nicolas Demorand, said staff were "horrified witnesses" of the drama. "When someone with a gun comes into a newspaper in a democracy, it's very, very serious whatever the mental state of that person.

The 27-year-old victim was said to have been hit in the chest and is in a critical condition in hospital. The French government immediately sent police to the offices of other media organisations in Paris.

The prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said the Libération shooting was a "direct attack on one of the pillars of our democracy, the freedom of the press. The government will not allow representatives of the written or broadcast press, whose work is vital to the functioning of our democracy and our republican institutions, be threatened or victims of criminal acts while doing their jobs."