An armed former soldier on the run in southwestern France has been detained after being seriously wounded in a shootout with security forces following a massive manhunt, the local police head said on Monday.

Officials reported earlier that police with sniffer dogs were combing woods in southwestern France on Monday for a man who opened fire on officers who were responding to a domestic violence incident.

Authorities said the man was a heavily armed former soldier who they believed was carrying a long-range hunting rifle.

The 1,800 residents of Le Lardin-Saint-Lazare village in the Dordogne were urged to stay at home and schools were shuttered as police helicopters circled in the sky.

The suspect went to his ex-partner’s house around midnight Saturday into Sunday and threatened her new boyfriend, police said. Officers then came under fire when they arrived at the scene. There were no reports of casualties.

“Hours go by, in-depth work continues. Our goal is to arrest this character without endangering the population,” the Dordogne Prefect Federic Perissat told a news conference.

Perissat said “this man is potentially very dangerous. He is armed.”

The suspect was used to operating on his own and could stay hidden for many days, said Andre Petillot, the commander of the regional police force.

Elite forces, over 300 gendarmes, sniffer dogs as well as 11 armored vehicles and 7 choppers have been searching for him since Saturday.

Police called for witness and issued a photo of the suspect, a bearded man of athletic built named Terry Dupin, born in 1992 in Rosny-Sous-Bois, near Paris.