A manhunt is under way in France for a criminal linked to drugs and gangland killings who was broken out of a prison van in a dramatic ambush that killed two prison officers.

Mohamed Amra, 30, became France’s most wanted man when a gang using heavy weaponry opened fire on his escort as he was being transferred from a court hearing in Rouen back to jail in the town of Evreux on Monday.

Nicknamed La Mouche - The Fly - Amra was convicted of aggravated burglary last week but is reportedly tied to drugs and gangland killings.

The attack that freed him, which took place at the Incarville tollbooth on the A154 motorway, has left two other officers fighting for their lives.

Security camera footage showed a car ram the van transporting Amra while a group of hooded gunmen emerged from several points around the toll plaza, firing shots at the officers before opening a door to free the inmate.

Two officers died instantly and three others were seriously wounded, said Eric Dupond-Moretti, the French justice minister. Two remained in a “life-threatening” critical condition, he added.

The minister paid tribute to the slain men, saying one had a wife who is five months pregnant, and the other two children who are about to celebrate their 21st birthday tomorrow.

Police unions said their colleagues stood no chance given that they were travelling in an un-armoured van and armed with simple handguns when they were confronted by men carrying “weapons of war”.

The French interior ministry did not answer calls as to whether it had alerted all ports at French borders to check if the fugitive seeks to flee the country.

France can close or heavily police its borders in times of crisis such as during the Covid pandemic and in the wake of a terror attack.

The attack comes at a politically sensitive time for Emmanuel Macron, whose government recently launched multiple anti-drug “cleanup operations” in raids around the country.

Embarrassingly for the government, Amra had tried to saw through the bars of his prison cell only two days earlier, according to a police source cited by Le Parisien, leading them to upgrade his surveillance status.

He and his accomplices made their getaway in two vehicles, a white Audi A5 and a BMW 5 series. Both vehicles were later found burned out. The gang is thought to have then fled in a third, unknown, vehicle.

Amra had been under investigation in the southern city of Marseille for “kidnapping and sequestering leading to death” in 2022. The victim, whose charred body was found with a bullet in the back of the head, reportedly came from Amra’s home town.

Le Parisien called him a “high-flying bandit”, and said he was involved in international drug trafficking and “suspected of masterminding a drugs-related assassination attempt on a French citizen in Spain in the summer of 2023.

The unsuccessful hit, filmed by terrified tourists in Marbella, is alleged to have been part of a drugs turf war with a rival known as Mehdi.

Under investigation for murder attempt

Amra is also under investigation for “attempted homicide in an organised gang” in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. At the time of his escape, he had just been interviewed by prosecutors in Rouen over this case.

According to Le Parisien, after his attempt to saw through his cell bars, Amra had been placed in a disciplinary unit and his surveillance level had been raised to “Escort 3” - just below the “special surveillance” level.

Elite GIGN units were sent to the scene of the ambush along with around 200 gendarmes as part of a plan Epervier (Sparrowhawk plan) granting police sweeping stop-and-search powers to find fugitives or abduction victims.

President Macron said: “Everything is being done to find the perpetrators of this crime so that justice can be done in the name of the French people. We will be implacable.”

The escape of a man Le Parisien said was ‘the head of a narcotics network” is embarrassing for the Macron administration as it came on the day that a French senatorial commission of inquiry released a report warning that France was “submerged with drug trafficking”, which is “infiltrating everywhere like an inexorably rising tide”.

In a damning indictment, it concluded that Mr Macron’s anti-drugs plan to be presented shortly by the government is “meagre” and “not up to the task”.

A ‘dark day’ for prison officers

“This is a dark day for prison officers,” said Yoan Karar of the FO Justice union who said the slain officers were from the PREJ, the centre for judicial extractions, in Caen.

Even though prison vans possess electronic tags to drive straight through toll booths, “they often have to slow down and the barrier is a weak spot”, he added.

Mr Karar said that the officers, who were wearing bullet-proof jackets, stood “little chance against heavy weapons given that they only possess 9mm handguns”.

French politicians expressed anger at their deaths.

”It is with shock and immense sadness that we learn of the attack on a prison administration vehicle in Incarville, and the death of prison officers,” said Jordan Bardella, of Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally.

Éric Zemmour of the hard-Right Renew party said: “When a prison vehicle is attacked and its officers murdered, it is the whole of the justice system, and the whole of the French people, who are being targeted.

“France must equip itself with the means to win the war that has been declared against it.”