A French man has been decapitated and the suspect has been killed by police in what is being investigated as an act of terrorism.
The victim of the Friday stabbing was a middle school history teacher who had a discussion with his students about caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
The attack happened in the Parisian suburb of Eragny, in the Val d’Oise region at about 5 p.m. local time, according to the BBC. The suspect reportedly threatened police and was armed with a knife and an airsoft gun before being fatally shot by the responding officers about 600 meters away from where he decapitated the middle school teacher.
A police source told Reuters that witnesses reported hearing the suspect shout “Allahu akbar,” an Arabic phrase for God is great.
The French anti-terrorism prosecutor has been called on to lead the investigation. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who was traveling to Morocco, is now returing to Paris following the attack.
Caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad are a tense issue in France. According to Islam, Muhammad’s appearance is not allowed to be depicted. In 2015, a dozen people were killed when gunmen opened fire in the office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper that had published cartoons of Muhammad.
A trial is now underway five years later in France for some of the accused accomplices of the attackers. Last month a man used a meat cleaver to stab two people outside the former Charlie Hebdo office in Paris.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
