Hundreds of officers are hunting fugitive Mohamed Amra and the four gunmen who enabled his escape at a French motorway toll, which left two prison guards dead and three more seriously injured.

An International arrest warrant has been issued by Interpol, with as many as 350 investigators now mobilised, as the search enters its third day.

The 30-year-old suspected drug boss, also known as “La Mouche” or “The Fly”, was being transported from a court hearing in Rouen, to a secure jail in Evreux, when his prison van was ambushed in broad daylight, on the A154 motorway in Val-de-Reui, Normandy.

The group fled the scene in two vehicles, but not before the two officers – Fabrice Moello, a 52-year-old father of two, and Arnaud Garcia, a 35-year-old whose wife was five months pregnant – were gunned down in cold-blood.

The cars were later discovered burnt out several miles from where the incident occurred.

“Slaughtered like dogs”

Interpol say there has been a highest level “Red Notice” issued for the fugitive prisoner and the four assailants, who the French justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti said, had “slaughtered like dogs” the officers who were only doing their job.

The shocking ambush, dramatically played out in front of the general public at 11am, at the busy Incarville tollbooth. The prison van – which was two-thirds of the way through a 34-mile journey after a morning court hearing – slowed to get through the toll, and the pause made them vulnerable to the planned attack.

No chance against military-grade weapons

In a sickening move, a black SUV rammed into the van before gunmen, in hoods and balaclavas, leapt out and opened fire with military-grade weapons, believed to be pump action rifles and automatic machine guns. They were joined by a second crew, who stepped out of a nearby Audi.

The guards fired back and it is reported one member of the gang was wounded. The coordinated attack took place in less than two minutes.

Three wounded officers remain in intensive care, one with a bullet in the forehead, but miraculously still alive. The shooting marks the country’s first fatal attack on prison staff for more than 30 years.

On 10 May, Amra was convicted of burglary, which just adds to the total of 13 convictions he already had. He was also being held in connection with an attempted murder in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, and suspicion of ordering the gangland execution of a man in Marseille, in June 2022, a city plagued by drug-related gang violence.

He is strongly suspected as being the head of a narcotics network and had been held under “special surveillance” in jail after trying to saw through the bars of his cell.

Border crossing fear

The big fear for French investigators is that Amra and his accomplices will try to cross borders. Jacques Morel, general of the gendarmerie said: “Given the preparation that went into this attack and the people he has around him, I think that the hypothesis of the run was also worked on; so of course, he will try to cross either towards the Maghreb, or towards Spain.”

“Not paid to die”

Meanwhile, French prison officer unions have called for walkouts at institutions across the country in support of their two colleagues who tragically lost their lives. Frederic Liakhoff, secretary of the prison officer union at the penitentiary centre in Caen, made the point that the prison guards accompanying Amra were armed with simple handguns when they came face-to-face with “weapons of war”.

At one prison near Marseille, more than 100 prison officers had gathered the following day beneath a banner which read: “We’re not paid to die.”