Police are guarding media offices across Paris after a shotgun attack at a newspaper office left a man fighting for his life.

The victim was shot in the chest and stomach and at the Paris base of left-wing French daily Liberation, according to police and the newspaper.

The shooter reportedly entered the lobby of the building just before 10.15am, fired two shots and then fled.

Liberation says the 27-year-old victim is in a critical condition at the city’s Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital.

The shooting comes three days after a man stormed into the Paris headquarters of news channel BFMTV brandishing a shotgun and warned a senior editor: “Next time, I will not miss you.”

Police are investigating a possible link between the two incidents.

A police security cordon has now been put up around the newspaper’s offices in central Paris.

Liberation executive Nicolas Demorand said the attack had left staff horrified.

“When you have someone with a shotgun coming into a newspaper’s offices in a democracy, it is very, very serious, whatever the mental state of the person.

“If papers and other media have to become bunkers, something has gone wrong in our society.”

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