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Terror has struck France for the second time in three weeks after the gruesome beheading of a history teacher in a Paris suburb.
The alleged attacker was shot dead by the police after the teacher died in the Rue de Conflans-Saint-Honorine.
French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he called an “Islamist terror attack” and urged the nation to stand united against extremism.
Authorities said the teacher had discussed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad of Islam with his class.
The French antiterrorist prosecutor opened an investigation for murder with an alleged terrorist motive.
Four people, one minor, were detained hours later, said the anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard’s office. Police are typically deployed to find family and friends of potential suspects in terrorism cases.
Macron visited the school where the teacher worked in Conflans-Saint-Honorine and met with the staff.
An Associated Press reporter saw three ambulances at the scene, heavily armed police surrounding the area, and police vans lined up on nearby streets.
Macron said: “One of our compatriots was killed today because he taught … freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not to believe.”
He said the attack should not divide France because that is what the extremists want. “We must all be together as citizens,” he said.
The incident came as the Macron government is working on a bill to tackle radical Islamists who authorities say are creating a parallel society outside of the values of the French Republic.
France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with up to five million members, and Islam is the country’s number two religion.
A police officer said the suspect, who was armed with a knife and an airsoft pistol, firing plastic pellets, was shot and killed about 600 yards from where the teacher was killed after he failed to respond to orders from put down your weapons, and acted threateningly.
The teacher had received threats after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the cartoons about 10 days ago, the police officer told The Associated Press.
A student’s father had filed a complaint against the teacher, another police officer said, adding that the alleged killer did not have a child at the school.
An identification card was found at the scene, but police were verifying identity. French media reported that the suspect was an 18-year-old Chechen, born in Moscow. That information could not be immediately confirmed.
There are French police officers outside the school.
Source: AP
France has seen occasional violence involving its Chechen community in recent months, in the Dijon region, the Mediterranean city of Nice and the western city of Saint-Dizier, believed to be linked to local criminal activity.
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It was not known what link, if any, the attacker might have with the master or if he had accomplices.
The attack is the second terrorism-related incident since the opening of an ongoing trial for the January 2015 newsroom massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of the prophet of Islam.
When the trial began, the newspaper reprinted cartoons of the prophet to underscore the right to freedom of expression.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the school.
Shortly afterwards, a young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing two people with a butcher knife in front of the newspaper’s former offices. They suffered no life-threatening injuries.
The 18-year-old told police he was upset by the publication of the cartoons.
In a video recently posted on social media, a man who described himself as a father at school said that the teacher who was killed had recently displayed an offensive image of a man and told students that he was “the prophet of the Muslims “.
Before showing the pictures, the teacher asked the Muslim children to leave the room because he planned to show something shocking, the man said.
What was the message you wanted to send to these children? Why does a history teacher behave this way in front of 13-year-olds? “asked the man.
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