A policewoman shot near Paris has died after a second attack on police in the French capital in consecutive days.
The officer and another victim were fired on in Montrouge, just south of the city, this morning.
Montrouge mayor Pierre Brossollette said the policewoman and a colleague went to the site to deal with a traffic accident.
A car stopped and a man got out and shot at them before fleeing.
Witnesses said the shooter fled in a Renault Clio car.
Police sources said he had been wearing a bullet-proof vest and had a handgun and assault rifle.
It is unclear at this stage whether there was any link to the killings at the Charlie Hebdo magazine
However, one police officer at the scene told Reuters the man did not appear to fit the bill of the Charlie Hebdo shooters.
Live French television showed around a dozen police dressed in protective wear and helmets massed outside a building near the scene of the shoot-out. The new incident came amid heightened tension across France after yesterday’s massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper, in which 12 people, including two police officers, were killed.
Kebab shop explosion
In a separate incident, police sources said the window of a kebab shop next to a mosque in the central town of Villefrance-sur-Saone was blown out by an overnight explosion. Local media said there were no wounded.
Security services have long feared that nationals drawn into Islamist militant groups fighting in Syria and Iraq could return to their home countries to launch attacks - though there is no suggestion that the two suspects named by police had actually fought in either of these countries.
Britain’s Cobra security committee was meeting on Thursday morning.
London’s transport network was target of an attack in 2005, four years after 9/11.
There have been attacks in Kenya, Nigeria, India and Pakistan that have raised fears in Europe.
Islamist militants have repeatedly threatened France with attacks over its military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa, and the government reinforced its anti-terrorism laws last year.
French police are continuing to carry out huge manhunt for two brothers suspected of killing 12 people on Wednesday at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in a presumed Islamist militant strike.
On Thursday, authorities released photos of the two French nationals still at large, calling them “armed and dangerous.”
Seven people have already been arrested in the ongoing investigation, prime minister Manuel Valls said.
Reuters/PA