A police officer was attacked in the southern French city of Cannes by a man with a knife claiming to act "in the name of the prophet" on Monday but was unharmed, the interior minister and police sources said.
The police officer emerged from the attack unscathed, saved from serious injury or worse by his bulletproof vest, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.
The assailant suffered life-threatening injuries after he was shot by other officers.
Darmanin visited the Mediterranean resort city shortly after the attack.
"I am going to the scene immediately this morning and I offer my support to the national police and to the city of Cannes," added Darmanin on his Twitter account.
The policeman was behind the wheel of a car in front of a police station at 6.30am when the attacker opened the door of the vehicle and stabbed him with a knife, a police source speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP.
The officer was saved thanks to his bullet-proof vest.
The attacker was severely injured by another police officer and was in serious condition. French media reports said the suspect is an Algerian national with an Italian residency permit. The suspect was born in 1984 and was unknown to French authorities, according to media reports.
The sources said police were treating the incident as a possible terrorist attack.
French police have been targeted in a series of attacks from Islamic extremists in recent years, leading to calls for better protection and harsher jail sentences.
On April 23, a police administrative assistant was killed when an attacker stabbed her at the entrance to a police station in the Parisian suburb of Rambouillet. The attacker, a 36-year-old Tunisian national, was shot dead by security forces.
In October 2019, three officers and one police employee in Paris were stabbed to death in the headquarters of the Paris police by a radicalised IT employee.
Each attack has sharpened attention on the danger of Islamic extremism in France, which has suffered a wave of violence over the last decade from radicals inspired by al Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS) group.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)
