French police on Tuesday, October 31, shot and gravely wounded a woman who was making threats in a Paris regional train, a police source and the Paris prosecutor's office told Agence France-Presse. According to witnesses, the woman was "completely veiled," shouted "Allahu akbar" and "made threats," the police source said, adding that she had "refused to comply with police orders."
After passengers on a suburban train alerted police, officers managed to "isolate" the woman at the Bibliotheque Francois Mitterrand station on the capital's left bank, which was quickly evacuated, the police source said. She threatened "to blow herself up," the Paris prosecutor's office said, adding that police fired one shot, inflicting a life-threatening injury.
Police have launched two investigations, prosecutors said. One will probe the woman's actions, specifically of "glorification, death threats and intimidation of a public official," while another is to elucidate whether the police's use of a firearm was justified.
France has been under "emergency attack" alert since October 13, when a teacher in the northern city of Arras was stabbed to death by an Islamist former pupil.