Thalys said on its website that several trains had been delayed after the “intervention of security forces at Arras station”. The names of the two Americans were not released.
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The SNCF spokesman had said earlier that three people were injured, two of them seriously, and that at least one suffered gunshot wounds.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office says it does not believe any British nationals are among the injured.
The French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who was in the 1994 film Killing Zoe, reportedly hurt his hand when he broke the glass to pull the alarm.
An American and a Briton were reportedly among those hurt in the attack.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was heading to Arras in the wake of the incident, his ministry said.
They showed “great bravery in very trying circumstances”, he said. Everything is being done to shed light on this tragedy’.
“Investigators from France’s special anti-terror police are leading the investigation into the attack, which occurred just before 6 pm local time”.
Witness Nicolas Martinage, 17, said he had seen the victims being taken off the train in Arras. One of the Marines was wounded, the Pentagon said. “Both men were on stretchers”, he told AFP. “The train stopped and the emergency services are on site”, the Thalys official Twitter account tweeted.
“An important” police presence has been set up at the police station there, he said. “They were looking for someone, people were scared”.
French authorities have been on heightened alert since Islamic extremist attacks in January left 20 people dead, including the three attackers.
The suspect was loading his automatic Kalashnikov rifle in a toilet, apparently preparing to attack, when the service members confronted him, said a European counterterrorism official.
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Thalys is the high-speed red train which travels from Paris to Brussels in 1 hour 22 minutes, to Cologne, Germany, in 3 hours 14 minutes and Amsterdam in only 3 hours and 16 minutes.
