A parent shouting Allahu Akbar and thought to be wearing an explosive vest has been shot dead by French police near Paris after allegedly beheading a school teacher with a knife.

The victim was said to have been a school teacher who had enraged parents by displaying cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to pupils.

A source told Le Parisien: ‘The victim had recently given a lesson to his students on freedom of expression and had shown the caricatures of Muhammad’.

This led to an enraged parent confronting the teacher with a kitchen knife, and then cutting his head off, said the source.

The first bloodbath took place in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb some 25 miles from the centre of the French capital on Friday at around 5 pm (1500 GMT) near a school.

French anti-terror prosecutors confirmed they were investigating an assault in which a man was decapitated on the outskirts of Paris.

French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Conflans-Sainte-Honorine following an emergency meeting at the interior ministry on Friday evening, BFM TV reported. 

A picture of a body lying in the middle of the road was shared online before French anti-terror prosecutors confirmed they were investigating an assault in which a man was decapitated on the outskirts of Paris

The victim was said to have been a school teacher who had enraged parents by displaying cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to pupils

‘The body of decapitated man was found at around 5.30 in the afternoon,’ said an investigating source.

‘When police arrived, the person thought to be responsible was still present and threatened them with his weapons.’

The unidentified killer then fled to the nearby town of Eragny-sur-Oise, around two miles away, where he refused to surrender.

‘He was waving a gun by this time and further threatened officers,’ said the source. ‘This is when he was shot dead by police.. Around ten shots were heard.’

Pictured: Armed police stands near a police car in the outskirts of Paris where the attack took place. The first bloodbath took place in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb some 25 miles from the centre of the French capital on Friday

Pictured: More emergency services gathering after the attack and subsequent shooting

Anti-terrorist prosecutors immediately became investigating the incident, said the source, who said the attacker was being viewed as a ‘suspected terrorist’. 

French news station FranceNews24 suggested that the attack was related to cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published by Charlie Hebdo. 

Witnesses watched the man decapitating his unnamed victim – who was also male – in broad daylight, and close to a school.

Officers rushed to the scene after the alarm was raising, and watched the killer running away, towards Eragny.

By 7pm, the scene of the suspected murder, and the scene where the killer was himself gunned down, had been sealed off.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin was ‘making his way to the scene of the attack,’ said a spokesman for his ministry, who also confirmed as a terrorist enquiry.

A picture shared on Twitter showed police gathering on a street in Eragny-sur-Oise, where the suspected terrorist is said to have been shot dead by police after a chase

The unidentified killer fled to the nearby town of Eragny-sur-Oise (pictured) around two miles away from where the alleged beheading occurred, where he refused to surrender and was shot dead by the police

The attack follows a terrorism enquiry being launched in Paris last month after two news agency staff were stabbed outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo – the magazine where staff members were murdered in 2015 after publishing cartoons mocking the Prophet.

Those on trial range in age from 29 to 68, and are charged with providing logistics to the terrorists, including cash, weapons and vehicles.

Paris-born brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi murdered 12 people in the Charlie Hebdo offices using Kalashnikovs, before escaping in a stolen car, and later being killed by police.

A third terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, gunned down four shoppers in a kosher supermarket and a policewoman during three days of carnage before he too was killed.

Charlie Hebdo now produces its magazine from a top secret location, and in September re-published the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed which had provoked outrage in the Muslim world. 

There have been a series of bomb, gun and knife attacks carried out by Islamic State and al-Qaeda operatives in France, dating back to early 2015

The deadliest single terrorist attack ever in the country came in November 2015 when 130 people were killed in Paris.

Suicide bombers pledging allegiance to ISIS targeted the Stade de France, cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan music venue, where 90 died.

Earlier in the year, two Paris-born gunmen linked to Al-Qaeda broke into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, leaving 17 people dead inside and three outside.

In July 2016, 86 people were killed and more than 400 injured when a 19-tonne truck was deliberately driven into crowds on the seafront promenade at Nice, in the South of France.

The terrorist turned out to be a Tunisian immigrant who was shot dead by police.

During the same month, two Isis terrorists murdered an 86-year-old Catholic priest during a church service in Normandy.

There have been frequent knife attacks on the forces of law and order, leading to the deaths of serving police.

In October last year, a radicalised computer operative working at the Paris Prefecture in central Paris stabbed four of his colleagues to death.

The attacker – who was also shot dead – turned out to be a Muslim convert who kept extremist Al-Qaeda and Islamic State literature and images on his computer. 

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