German phone card, shaky ID for Paris police attacker

Brandet later confirmed to Reuters that the suicide belt was fake.

A man carrying an Islamic State emblem has been shot dead outside a Paris police station after reportedly attacking officers with a butcher’s knife.

Luc Poignant, an official in the police union, told Deutsche Welle the man shouted “Allahu Akhbar” (‘God is great’ in Arabic) as he tried to enter the building.

The Paris Prosecutor François Molins has said the man was carrying a mobile phone and a sheet of paper featuring the ISIL flag and a claim of responsibility, written in Arabic.

Investigators were exploring possible links to a “terrorist undertaking”, but the statement gave no further details.

Police are “working on the hypothesis” that the assailant is a man who was involved in a minor 2013 robbery in the southern Var region, according to a French security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.

Explosives experts were sent to the multi-ethnic Goutte d’Or district, close to the Gare du Nord worldwide station. Another militant, Amedy Coulibaly, later shot and killed a policewoman before shooting hostages dead at the Hyper Cacher market.

The incident came shortly after French President Francois Hollande addressed for the first time a New Year greetings message to police services to honor the policemen killed while fulfilling their duties.

France has been in a state of emergency since a series of attacks claimed by the IS terrorist group killed 130 people in Paris on 13 November.

Mr Hollande said since the attack on Charlie Hebdo, almost 200 people in France had been placed under travel restrictions to prevent them from joining the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Pictures posted on social media showed a man in jeans and a grey jacket lying with his arms out at his sides on the pavement, yards from the entrance to the police station.

In a speech to police forces charged with protecting the country against new attacks, Hollande said the government was passing new laws and ramping up security, but the threat remained high. Some 240 people had been taken in for questioning in connection with them.

The episode occurred a year after gunmen carried out attacks in and near Paris, including on Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket, killing 17 people.

Mr. Molins-as the lead counterterrorism prosecutor in France-is coordinating the probes into both major attacks a year ago, as well as smaller ones.

After the attacks, people around the world embraced the expression “Je suis Charlie” to express solidarity with the slain journalists, targeted for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

The phrase, however, is commonly used by Muslims worldwide and is not an indicator of extremism.

“I am not at all certain that the identity he gave is real”.