The man was wearing what looked like an explosive vest, but it was fake, according to two French police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
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He said about half the cases had reached the inquiry stage, and that even though the number of investigating magistrates had risen to 11 from 7 last September, anti-terrorism authorities risked being overwhelmed because “since 2012 we have seen a doubling of these cases every year”.
The statement Thursday from the Paris prosecutor said the man’s body was found with a cell phone and a piece of paper with an emblem of the Islamic State group and a claim of responsibility written in Arabic.
“This identity has been checked with the intelligence services and he is not known under this name by the intelligence services”, Molins told France-Inter radio Friday.
“He fell immediately”, Luc Poignant, a police union representative, said on BFM. A robot was deployed, and after that, two dogs and then a man wearing heavy gear inspected the man’s jacket, fearing that he might have been carrying explosives.
Thursday’s incident also occurred on the one-year anniversary of the attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. She said the police shouted at the man and that they shot him as he was running towards them.
On Jan. 7, 2015, Islamist militant brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi attacked theCharlie Hebdo offices in Paris, beginning three days of terror that left 17 people dead.
A government official on Thursday said investigators looking into the attempted attack on police officers in the northern suburb of Paris earlier on Thursday did not yet have clear grounds to describe it as a terror act.
In what seems a odd coincidence, the shooting took place just minutes after the French President Francois Hollande, speaking elsewhere in the capital, praised police for their bravery in the line of duty.
He was attempting to assault a police officer at the reception of the station, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry is quoted as saying. He also remembered and honored the three officers who died in the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
In Thursday’s incident, the man tried to force his way into the police station in the 18th district in northern Paris, an area that Islamic State said it had been planning to hit as part of the November attacks.
In his speech, Mr Hollande said a “terrorist threat” continues to weigh on the country, and called for better surveillance of “radicalised” citizens who join jihadist groups before returning to France.
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The whereabouts of Salim Benghalem, 35, who is believed to have had links to the perpetrators of both series of Paris attacks, remain unknown.
