PARIS — A man armed with a knife on Friday killed a middle school history teacher by slitting his throat in front of his school in a suburb of Paris, police said, in an attack that was being treated as terrorism.
The attacker was shot dead by a police patrol a few streets away. The teacher had shown pupils in his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, which are considered by Muslims to be blasphemous, according to a police source.
France’s anti-terror prosecutor said it was investigating the attack, which took place in Conflans Sainte-Honorine, a commuter suburb north-west of Paris. President Emmanuel Macron arrived at the scene on Friday evening.
French broadcaster BFMTV reported that the suspected attacker was 18 years old and born in Moscow.
The incident carried echoes of the attack five years ago on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, unleashing an issue that is still casting a pall over French society.
Less than a month ago, a man originally from Pakistan used a meat cleaver to attack and wound two people who were on a cigarette break outside the offices where Charlie Hebdo was based at the time of the 2015 attack.
In Friday’s attack, a police source said that witnesses had heard the attacker shout “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is Greatest.” A police spokesman said that information was being checked.
Another police source, as well as multiple media reports, said the victim had been decapitated in the attack, but this was not confirmed. The attack took place in the street in front of the middle school where the victim worked.
“This evening, it’s the Republic which is under attack with the despicable assassination of one of its servants, a teacher,” French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer wrote on Twitter.
“Our unity and our resolve are the only responses faced with the monstrosity of Islamist terrorism.”
A Twitter thread posted on Oct. 9 contained allegations that a history teacher in Conflans Sainte-Honorine had shown pupils cartoons purporting to depict the Prophet Mohammad.
The thread contained a video of a man who said his daughter, a Muslim, was one of the pupils in the class, and that she was shocked and upset by the teacher’s actions.
The man in the video urged Twitter users to complain to the authorities and get the teacher removed from his post. Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the video.