A Tunisian killed a police officer with a knife on Friday in the entrance to the Rambouillet police station, near Paris, before being killed by gunfire from a police officer.
The national anti-terrorism prosecution has not taken up the case “at this stage,” he told AFP.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that they would go to the police station in this city of nearly 26,000 inhabitants in the afternoon, located about sixty kilometers southwest of Paris.
“A police officer was the victim of a knife attack at the Rambouillet police station, where I am going,” tweeted the Minister of the Interior.
The facts took place around 12:20 p.m. (local time) in the entrance hall of the police station, said a police source. The 48-year-old administrative official was returning from her lunch break when the assailant stabbed her twice in the throat, according to the first elements of the investigation.
The official died on the spot, despite the intervention of the firefighters.
The assailant was shot by a single policeman, according to a police source. In cardio-respiratory arrest, he died.
He is a 36-year-old Tunisian national, unknown to the police and territorial intelligence, and in a regular situation.
The police are among the recurring objectives of jihadist organizations, including the Islamic State (IS) group, while France has been affected in recent years by an unprecedented wave of Islamist attacks that have left more than 250 dead .
“The Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior (…) will give their support to the colleagues of the victim and through them to the whole of the national police” and the security forces “again targeted”, indicated the government in a press release.
“The horror, once again which targets and strikes the police,” responded the police union Alliance on Twitter.
The last few years have been marked by several stabbing attacks in France, committed by jihadists.
On October 16, 2020, a college professor, Samuel Paty, was murdered and beheaded by an 18-year-old from the Russian Republic of Chechnya.
On October 3, 2019, inside the Paris police headquarters, an employee stabbed three police officers and an administrative agent, before being shot dead. The attacker, recently converted to Islam, was a computer scientist, attached to the intelligence department.