French police officer stabbed by knife attacker in Cannes

A French police officer was saved by his body armour after he was stabbed in a knife attack in Cannes.

Police are investigating whether the attack was a terrorist incident.

The attack happened yesterday morning when a man opened the door of a police car, which was parked in front of a police station in the city in southern France, stabbing the officer with a knife.

The man then tried to attack a second officer in the car.

A third officer then fired his gun, seriously injuring the attacker.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who visited Cannes, said the attacker had been “neutralised”.

“I want to underline the courage and exemplary coolness of the police officers who neutralised the assailant and avoided the worst.”

The Algerian held an Italian residency permit, was in France legally and was not on a watch list of people thought to hold extremist views, the minister said.

The investigation is in the hands of the local prosecutor for now and not the national antiterrorism prosecutor.

Mr Darmanin said yesterday it was too early to know the attacker’s motive.

The attack happened as President Emmanuel Macron tries to persuade voters that his government is on top of security and violent crime, six months before elections in which the far right and conservatives pose the biggest challenge to his re-election.

The French government in April unveiled a counterterrorism and intelligence bill setting out plans to combat extremism, days after a French police officer was killed inside a police station.

The bill would allow the government to track foreign funding of mosques. It was condemned by critics, who see it as means of stigmatising Muslims.

In May, three police officers were attacked in the Nantes suburb of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre.

The man entered the police station claiming his car had broken down and then stabbed one officer, took her gun and shot two others.

He had been on a radicalism watch list.