PARIS: An unidentified gunman shot dead a man and badly injured a woman outside a Paris hospital on Monday before fleeing the scene on a motorbike, police said.

Officials ruled out a terrorist attack, with witness statements appearing to point to a targeted killing.

The attacker fired several shots at the Henry Dunant private geriatric hospital run by the Red Cross in the upmarket 16th district, investigators said.

“One person died and one is seriously injured,” a fire service source said.

The two victims were taken into the hospital for treatment after the shooting which occurred in the early afternoon. The man died from his wounds.

“I heard six loud shots while I was having lunch around 1.30 pm (1130 GMT),” the caretaker of a nearby building told AFP.

“I went out immediately, and I saw a young black man on the ground, face down, outside the hospital. He was maybe 20 or 30 years old and he was already dead,” said the caretaker, who declined to give her name.

The injured woman works as a security guard at the hospital, which runs a Covid-19 vaccination centre.

Paris prosecutors said they were treating the shooting as a murder and an attempted murder.