Attack by assailant shouting Allahu Akbar injures three police officers in France

French police shot dead a 20-year-old man who attacked three police officers with a knife while shouting Allahu Akbar, injuring them. According to reports from Agence France-Presse, the incident occurred on Saturday, December 20, in front of the police station in the city of Joué-lès-Tours in central France. The assailant managed to injure one officer's face with a knife and wound two others before being killed. A source close to the police investigation identified the assailant as a 1994-born individual from the African country of Burundi, who held French nationality and was known to the police for committing public crimes. The source added that the assailant shouted Allahu Akbar from the beginning of the attack until he breathed his last. According to this source, the method of the attack was similar to what the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) has encouraged its supporters to carry out in Western countries. Investigators from the Paris anti-terrorism prosecutor's office have begun their investigation into the incident. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed his support for the injured police officers and stated that the government would 'severely' deal with anyone who attacks the police. Bernard Cazeneuve, the French Minister of the Interior, also visited the scene and stated that two police officers faced serious injuries, but the public prosecutor of Joué-lès-Tours indicated that the danger had passed for them. The French government estimates that 1,200 of its citizens are active in jihadist networks from Syria to Iraq. Paris is concerned about the possibility of terrorist attacks within France by jihadists returning from the Middle East. Mehdi Nemmouche, the main suspect in the terrorist attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium, earlier this year, is also a French national of Algerian descent. Another French Muslim, Mohamed Merah, killed seven people in Toulouse in 2012. In 2013, a French convert to Islam injured a French soldier with a knife in the La Défense area of Paris.