nice on Thursday, police said, in an incident that the city’s mayor described as terrorism.
Mayor Christian Estrosi said on Twitter that the knife attack had occurred in or near the city’s Notre Dame church and that police had detained the attacker.
Police said two people were confirmed to have been killed in the attack and several were injured.
A police source said a woman was beheaded. French politician Marine Le Pen also spoke of a beheading in the attack.
The attack comes as France is still reeling from the beheading earlier this month of French high school teacher Samuel Paty in Paris by a man of Chechen descent.
The attacker had said that he wanted to punish Paty for showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a civics lesson.
It was not immediately clear what was the reason for the
nice attack, or if there was any connection to the cartoons, which Muslims consider blasphemous.
Since Paty’s murder, French officials, backed by many ordinary citizens, have reaffirmed the right to display the cartoons, and the images have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with the murdered teacher.
That has sparked a torrent of anger in parts of the Muslim world, with some governments accusing French leader Emmanuel Macron of pursuing an anti-Islam agenda.
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