Police officials in Rambouillet, France, say a man attacked and killed a police administrator Friday with a knife outside a police station in the southwest suburb of Paris.
The officials say at least one police officer at the scene opened fire on the assailant – identified as a 36-year-old Tunisian national living in France – and fatally shot him. The French news agency reports the man had no criminal record and was unknown to police.
Authorities say the victim was a 49-year-old female police administrator, who was returning to work after her lunch break, when she was attacked and stabbed in the throat. Witnesses say the attacker shouted “Allah Akbar” – “God is great” – as he stabbed her.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex, along with other officials, was at the scene of the crime in Rambouillet, an upscale suburb about 60 kilometers southwest of Paris in France’s Yvelines department ((region)). Castex, and France’s antiterror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard, who also was at the scene, said the incident would be investigated as a terrorist attack.
On his Twitter account, French President Emmanuel Macron said the nation is at the side of the slain police administrator, her family, colleagues and the police. “In the fight against Islamist terrorism, we will not give up.”
The attack comes six months after another knife attack in the region when an Islamist teenager beheaded a schoolteacher in Conflans, another town outside Paris.
France has suffered a wave of attacks by Islamist militants or Islamist-inspired individuals in recent years that have killed about 250 people.
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