It was a lightning raid that took around three minutes in a scene only seen in movies and which left France in shock.
A group of hooded men freed the criminal Mohamed Amra, who is known as "The Fly" and has links to drug trafficking.
The attack of "indescribable savagery", as the French newspaper Le Figaro calls it, led to the death of two prison guards - one had two children and the other left his wife five months pregnant. Three others were injured.
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Now, the manhunt continues in a major operation involving hundreds of police officers with the support of aerial resources. Interpol is also on the alert.
Fugitive had tried to break through cell bars
The attack took place in Eure, a department in the Haute-Normandie region of northern France, and was carried out with weapons of war and in such a precise manner that it indicates the "professionalism" of those involved.
Amra was being transferred from Évreux prison to the Rouen courthouse for a hearing with an investigating judge after he tried to break through the bars of his cell to escape last Sunday.
The escape turned out to be much more spectacular - and terrible.
Two vehicles were involved in the escape, one of which had been stolen a few days earlier and crashed into one of the prison vans. At that point, armed men, dressed in black and with their faces covered, got out of the cars and opened fire on the two prison vehicles.
The attack took place on the A154 highway, near the Incarville tollbooth, on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the two cars used in the attack were found burnt out and are undergoing forensic examinations.
The case has been handed over to "the cream of the French police force", according to Le Figaro, including the National Fugitive Search Squad, the anti-gang section and the Rennes and Nantes anti-bandit squads.
But who is Mohamed Amra, or "The Fly"?
Mohamed Amra, 30, is a repeat offender with "a long criminal record", as Le Figaro reports. Born in Rouen, in the north of France, he has already been convicted 13 times - the first when he was just 15.
Antoine Albertini
Last week, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for robbery, but is suspected in several other cases, including organized gang murder, attempted murder and kidnapping.
Reuters confirmed to police sources that Amra is considered a "mid-level player in the French drug trade, with links to the powerful Blacks gang in Marseille".
He has also been under investigation since 2023 in Marseille for "organized collective murder, hostage-taking and participation in a criminal association with a view to committing a crime".
In 2022, he was sentenced to three years in prison for criminal association and robbery. Two years earlier, in 2020, he was sentenced to three months in prison for "motorized rodeos".
Despite this extensive criminal "CV", "The Fly" was not classified as a prisoner who needed special surveillance. For this reason, his transfer between the court and Évreux prison only involved five prison guards.
"They'll pay for what they've done"
The case has left France dismayed and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has already made a promise. "They will pay for what they have done," he assured, speaking of an attack on the country's "republican order".
"We are after you, we are going to find you and convict you," Attal warned in a message to the fugitives.
"When we question them, we will also put on trial this savagery that affects our society," added Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, stressing that the French are "shocked by the violence of this attack".
Darmanin also said that there are "unprecedented means" on the ground to catch "The Fly" and the group that helped him in "vile conditions".
The minister also noted that the violence of drug trafficking is not "just for movies". "There is no romanticism in drug trafficking, only murders, massacres, children between 14 and 15 who are tortured in basements because they don't want to cause damage," he told journalists.
"We can't cry for the widows and orphans of the Incarville tollbooth and continue to smoke our joints," Darmanin also stressed, noting that "narco-banditry kills far more than terrorism."
Far-right talks of "near civil war"
It was the first time since 1992 that a prison officer died in the course of his duties, French Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti told reporters.
The tragedy is already being used by the French far-right to convey its message against immigration.
Éric Zemmour, of the Reconquista party, spoke of the armed group's modus operandi, noting that it is identical to "guerrilla operations" with attacks on "state agents".
"We're in a situation of almost civil war," he said, rejecting the idea that he was "fanning the flames" and guaranteeing that he was only "describing" what was going on.
"What we've been experiencing for years is this civil war that is being waged against us by another people, another civilization, which doesn't have the same relationship with the individual and with violence as we do. It only knows the law of the clan and that of God," concluded Zemmour in the usual rhetoric of the far right.
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