An attacker fatally stabbed a woman police administrative worker on Friday at the entrance to a police station in Rambouillet, a middle-class town outside Paris.
Paris region president Valerie Pecresse said that terrorism could not be ruled out as a motive. Another official said separately that France’s anti-terror prosecutor had not yet decided to lead the investigation.
The woman was knifed in the throat, two security sources said.
“France has lost one its everyday heroines in a barbaric gesture of infinite cowardice,” French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on the scene of the attack. The assailant was shot dead by police officers, a security source said.
The attacker was of Tunisian nationality and residing in France. He was not previously known to France’s security agencies, a security source added.