Assailant and 1 victim killed in stabbing attack in Paris

PARIS — French prosecutors launched a terror probe Saturday after one person was killed and four injured in a knife attack in a busy area of central Paris on Saturday night.

Police shot the attacker dead. The Islamic State extremist organization claimed the attack, according to a U.S. analysis company that monitors its publications.

The incident took place at about 9 p.m. in an area near the Paris Opera where there are several theaters and many bars and restaurants.

An eyewitness told broadcaster BFMTV that she had seen a young man running toward three policemen, who shot him down.

Another witness told BFMTV she was eating with friends in a restaurant when she saw somebody passing by shouting for help, pursued by another person.

Top Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said witnesses reported that the assailant shouted “Allahu Akbar” — “God is most great” in Arabic — as he attacked a passer-by with a knife.

The nature of the attack also contributed to the assessment that it was a terrorist act, Molins said.

No information was immediately available as to the attacker’s identity.

French security forces have been on high alert since a series of terrorist attacks, mostly claimed by Islamic State, that claimed more than 230 lives in 2015 and 2016.

In the last two years a number of smaller-scale attacks by Islamist extremists have targeted security forces and, less often, random civilians.

“France has once again paid a price in blood but will not yield an inch to the enemies of liberty,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter.

“In the name of all French people, I salute the courage of the police officers who neutralized the terrorist,” Macron wrote.

Police union official Loic Travers told BFMTV that the attacker had tried to take on officers who arrived on the scene.

Officers had initially tried to overpower the attacker with a taser but had then been forced to open fire, Travers said.

Television images from the scene showed firefighters entering a restaurant across the street from a theater.

Large numbers of police were present, as well as ambulances and fire engines.

U.S. analysis company Site Intelligence Group quoted Islamic State’s semi-official Amaq Agency as saying that the attacker was “a soldier” of the organization.

The formula used was typical of Islamic State claims for attacks inspired by its propaganda, whether or not it had any direct link with the perpetrator.

Islamic State, based mainly in Syria and Iraq, also claimed the deadliest recent attack to hit France, when 130 people were killed in gun and bomb attacks on bars and restaurants, a theater and a stadium in November 2015.

A state of emergency imposed after the Paris attacks lapsed in November, but Macron’s government wrote a number of emergency powers into ordinary law before it ended.

France has joined the U.S. in backing a campaign by Kurdish-led forces who have expelled Islamic State from most of its territory in Syria.

Iraqi security forces have also recaptured almost all the ground it held in that country, where it originated.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said the police’s “cool, courage and professionalism once again enabled lives to be saved.”

“This evening, our city is bruised,” Hidalgo wrote on Twitter. “My first thoughts are with the family of the victim who lost their life. I also think of the injured and their families. I want to tell them that all Parisians are by their side.”