The attack on the policeman was committed on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The church is one of the most popular sights of the French capital, in the year it is visited by up to 13 million tourists, and it is located directly opposite the police headquarters.
The attacker, armed with a hammer, attacked the policeman, but was stopped by a shot of another law enforcement officer. The attacker was wounded, he was sent to the hospital, there is no information on his condition, said Le Figaro. The policeman did not suffer.
According to the newspaper, the criminal - of Algerian origin, about forty years of age, he lived in the suburb of the French capital of Val-d'Oise.
The area immediately after the incident was cordoned off by the incoming additional police forces, tourists from the square were taken out by buses. The nearby metro stations are closed. More than 900 people are blocked by the cathedral of Notre Dame - the police are checking whether there are any accomplices of the intruder among them. The police state that the situation is under control.
As often happens in such cases, quite conflicting information comes from eyewitnesses. One of the witnesses of the incident told Le Figaro that he had heard two shots and had seen the fallen body. Another admitted that he did not see anything because of the crush that followed the attack, but he heard three shots, though he thought it was a firecracker.
The prosecutor's office began investigating the crime - it is qualified as a terrorist act and assigned to the anti-terrorist unit of the Criminal Division and the National Security Administration.
Notre Dame Cathedral is not the first time in the center of terrorist attacks. In September last year, police near him discovered a parked Peugeot 607 without license plates with six gas bottles and three canisters with fuel in the trunk and documents in Arabic in the cabin. As one of the detained members of the group of terrorist followers of the IG (banned in Russia) later told the police, at night they stopped the car on the Montebello embankment, near North Dam, turned on the emergency and, after pouring gasoline in the trunk, tried to set the car on fire, Failed. When they were interested in what was happening, the waiter from the neighboring cafe went, they took him for a policeman in civilian clothes and fled in a panic, leaving the car, the Paris correspondent of "Rossiyskaya Gazeta". All three members of the group were later arrested by the police.
But as it turned out, even at the time when their search was conducted, two of them continued to prepare for the terrorist attacks. Their goals were to be stations, including Lyons in Paris, police commissariats. Planned and arrivals for people with the help of cars.
The latter method is used regularly by Islamists, the last time - just two days ago, on the night of June 4 on the London Bridge. Then the terrorists first squeezed people with a minibus, and then, coming out of it, they cut through with hunting knives. On their account 7 dead, 48 wounded.