A man has been shot and arrested by elite police officers on a motorway in northern France is the key suspect after a driver slammed his BMW into soldiers in Paris, injuring six of them in what appeared to be a carefully timed ambush before speeding away.
The driver's motive was unclear, but officials said he deliberately aimed at the soldiers, and counterterrorism authorities opened an investigation.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe confirmed police had arrested the suspect behind the attack.
"A suspect who was driving the car involved in the attack has been arrested on the highway between Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer," Mr Philippe told lawmakers during parliament question time.
A witness at the scene saw a BMW car, the model used in the attack, with several bullet holes in it. Ambulances surrounded the vehicle.
One policeman was wounded by a stray bullet in the operation, which took place on the A16 motorway near Marquise, close to the ports of Boulogne-Sur-Mer and Calais.
In an attack that authorities said bore the stamp of terrorism, the driver appeared to have lain in wait for the soldiers in a pedestrian zone near their base in Levallois-Perret.
The affluent suburb on the northwestern edge of Paris is home to France's domestic counter-terrorism agency.
Several dozen troops from Operation Sentinel, launched in the wake of Islamist attacks in Paris in early 2015, are based there.
The car accelerated into the troops, who were starting their patrol, when they were a few metres away, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters outside the hospital where the three more seriously injured victims were being treated.
"This was a deliberate act, not an accident," Mr Collomb said, adding that counter-terrorism investigators had taken up the case.
Authorities checked video surveillance of the area, near the city hall of Levallois, northwest of Paris, and police fanned out around the French capital and stopped numerous cars as they searched for the attacker.
French counter-terrorism prosecutors have opened an investigation into the attack, meaning authorities believe the attack was deliberate and planned with a terrorist motive.
The attack was the 15th on soldiers and police since they were deployed in large numbers nationwide after a series of Islamist militant attacks over the past two-and-a-half years.
