An unidentified individual stabbed a policewoman at her station in western France and opened fire on two other officers before he was shot dead, authorities said Friday.
The motive for the attack was not clear at the moment.
Authorities were trying to verify the identity of the attacker, national police told The Associated Press. The three wounded police officers were stable, the service said.
After stabbing the woman at the station in Chapelle-sur-Erdre, a suburb of Nantes, the assailant took the gun from her and fled, the national police said.
THE ATTACK OCCURRED IN A SUBURB OF NANTES
Authorities deployed helicopters, dogs and more than 200 agents to search for him and closed nearby schools and businesses. When they located him, the man shot at the police officers who were trying to arrest him, wounding two.
The man suffered serious injuries that killed him on Friday afternoon, said a police official, who asked not to reveal his identity.
The French government on Thursday raised the level of terrorist alert throughout the country after the attack that killed three people in a Catholic church in Nice, in southern France, announced Prime Minister Jean Castex.
Police and ambulances blocked streets in the normally quiet residential area.
The Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, and the Nantes Procurator went to the site of the attack.
National security and attacks on police officers are prominent issues heading into next month’s regional elections and the 2022 presidential election.
It was in Nice where the authorities are investigating the attack as terrorism.
Two police officers have been killed in France in recent weeks. One was an administrative agent stabbed at her station near Paris in what authorities consider an Islamic extremist attack. The other was an agent of an anti-drug unit shot in Avignon.