French president Macron says teacher was victim of terrorist attack in Paris suburb

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that a man killed in a Paris suburb on Friday was the victim of a terrorist attack.

A middle school history teacher was knifed to death near the school where earlier this month he had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, considered blasphemous by Muslims, French officials said.
The attacker was shot dead by a police patrol a few streets away from the scene in a residential suburb north-west of Paris.

"Our compatriot was flagrantly attacked, he was a victim of an Islamist terrorist attack," Macron told reporters at the scene.

"It's not by chance that this evening it was a teacher that this terrorist killed, because he wanted to defeat the nation in its values."

Friday's killing, by targeting a teacher, was interpreted by many public figures as an attack on the essence of French statehood, with the values it espouses of secularism, freedom of worship, and freedom of expression.

The victim of Friday's attack sustained multiple knife wounds to the neck, according to a police representative. One law enforcement source said the teacher had been beheaded in the attack.

French broadcaster BFMTV reported that the suspected attacker was 18 years old and born in Moscow. Law enforcement officials did not name the attacker or his victim.

A police source said that witnesses had heard the attacker shout "Allahu Akbar", or "God is Greatest."

The incident carried echoes of the attack five years ago on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, unleashing divisions that are still casting a pall over French society.

MORE: https://globalnews.ca/news/7401708/paris-attack-anti-terror-investigation/

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