Teacher beheaded at French school

Class was discussing Muhammad caricatures; suspect killed

PARIS — A history teacher who opened a discussion with students on caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was beheaded in a French street Friday, and police fatally shot the suspected killer, authorities said.

The French anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive, the prosecutor’s office said.

The gruesome killing of the teacher in a middle school occurred in the town of Conflans-sainte-honorine, while the suspect was killed by police in adjoining Eragny. The towns are located in the Val d’oise region northwest of Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron was visiting the school.

Heavily armed police sealed off the area around the school, and police vans and emergency vehicles lined leafy adjacent streets, according to a reporter at the scene.

The suspect’s identity was not made public. French media reported that the suspect was an 18-year-old Chechen born in Moscow. That information could not be immediately confirmed.

France has offered asylum to many Chechens since the Russian military waged war against Islamist separatists in Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, and there are Chechen communities scattered around France.

France has seen occasional violence involving its Chechen community in recent months, in the Dijon region, the Mediterranean city of Nice, and the western town of

Saint-dizier, believed linked to local criminal activity.

The attack came as Macron is pushing for a new law against what he calls domestic “separatism,” notably by Islamic radicals accused of indoctrinating vulnerable people through home schools, extremist preaching and other activities.

France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, with up to 5 million members, and Islam is the country’s No. 2 religion.

A police official said the suspect was shot dead about 650 yards from where the male teacher was killed.

The teacher had received threats after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures about 10 days ago, the police official said. The parent of a student had filed a complaint against the teacher, another police official said.