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Four people detained in wake of terrorist attack in France - agency

They are relatives of the attacker who was shot by the police at the scene of the crime

© EPA-EFE/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON

PARIS, October 17. /TASS/. The French police have detained four people, including an underage person, in relation to the knife attack on a teacher in the Paris area, AFP news agency informed, citing a source in the judicial bodies.

According to the source, all those detained were placed into custody. They are relatives of the attacker who was shot by the police at the scene of the crime.

On Friday afternoon, at about 17.00 Paris time, a teacher was attacked outside the school in Conflans Sainte-Honorine. His throat was slit with a kitchen knife. The assailant tried to threaten police officers who arrived at the scene but was shot dead.

Controversial information is immediately available about the attacker. It was earlier reported that the suspect was a 18-year-old foreign citizen of Chechen descent. He was allegedly born in Moscow, but lived in France. It is still unclear whether he had been brought to the attention of law enforcement agencies before.

The Russian Embassy in Paris informed TASS earlier that Russian diplomats had requested information about the attacker from French authorities.

The investigators said that the teacher’s last class on the freedom of expression could have triggered the attack as he was showing caricatures of Prophet Muhammad to his students then.

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