UPDATE: 2:35 p.m.
The French police officer who swapped places with a female supermarket employee being held hostage had already received a lifetime of accolades by the time he walked unarmed into the store under attack by an extremist gunman.
Known for his courage and sang-froid, Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame was acclaimed by neighbours, colleagues and French authorities as a hero Saturday after his death from wounds the day before. President Emmanuel Macron announced plans for a national ceremony to formally honour him.
After agreeing to the hostage swap, Beltrame surrendered his weapon — but kept his cellphone on, allowing authorities outside the Super U market in the southern French town of Trebes to hear what was happening inside.
Thanks to Beltrame's quick thinking, special police units heard gunshots inside the store Friday and stormed the building immediately, killing the attacker.
"Beyond his job, he gave his life for someone else, for a stranger," his brother, Cedric, told RTL radio in France. "He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing ... if we don't describe him as a hero, I don't know what you need to do to be a hero."
"Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much," Macron said. "In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero."
The date of the ceremony for Beltrame wasn't immediately set.
ORIGINAL: 7:30 a.m.
A French police officer who offered himself up to an Islamic extremist gunman in exchange for a hostage has died, raising the death toll in the attack in southern France to four. He was honoured Saturday as a national hero of "exceptional courage and selflessness."
Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame, 44, was among the first officers to respond to the attack Friday on the supermarket in the southern French town of Trebes.
Beltrame, who joined the elite police special forces in 2003 and served in Iraq in 2005, had organized a training session in the Aude region in December for just such a hostage situation. At the time, he armed his officers with paintball guns, according to the Depeche du Midi newspaper.
"We want to be as close to real conditions as possible," he said then.
But when he went inside the supermarket, he gave up his own weapon and volunteered himself in exchange for a female hostage.
Unbeknownst to the Morocco-born hostage-taker, he left his cellphone on so police outside could hear what was happening in the store. They stormed the building when they heard gunshots, officials said. Beltrame was fatally wounded.
In addition to the four people killed by the gunman in his rampage Friday, the attacker was killed by police. Fifteen others were injured.
"Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much," President Emmanuel Macron said. "In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero."
French police and soldiers have been a prime target of attacks by extremists, with 10 killed in recent years, including Beltrame. Other victims include three soldiers killed near Toulouse in 2012, three police officers shot to death in 2015, a police couple killed in their home in 2016 and a police officer killed on Paris' Champs-Elysees in 2017. Dozens of others have been wounded.
According to Macron's statement, Beltrame also served as a member of the presidential guard and in 2012 earned one of France's highest honours, the Order of Merit. He was married with no children.
Cedric Beltrame told RTL radio Saturday that his brother died "a hero."
"He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing," Cedric Beltrame said.
Beltrame's mother told RTL radio that, for her son, "to defend the homeland" was "his reason to live."
"He would have said to me, 'I'm doing my job, Mom, nothing more,'" she said.
People were placing flowers in front of the Gendarmerie headquarters in the French medieval city of Carcassone to pay tribute to Lt. Col. Beltrame. Flags at all gendarmeries were ordered to fly at half-staff.
Macron says investigators will focus on establishing how the gunman, identified by prosecutors as Morocco-born Redouane Lakdim, 25, got his weapon and how he became radicalized.
On Friday night, authorities searched a car and the apartment complex in central Carcassonne where Lakdim was believed to live. Two people were detained over alleged links with a terrorist enterprise, one woman close to Lakdim and a friend of his, a 17-year-old male, Paris prosecutor's office said.
Lakdim was known to police for petty crime and drug dealing. But he was also under surveillance and since 2014 was on the so-called Fiche S list, a government register of individuals suspected of being radicalized but who have yet to perform acts of terrorism.