Killer of 2 French police officers was previously sentenced on terrorism-related c-harges – report

Forty-two year-old police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing was stabbed at least nine times, and his partner was also killed. The attacker was identified by the media as 25-year-old Larossi Abballa.

“I am thinking of those who knew these two police officers and this child found by RAID [an elite police unit] after the assault,”French government spokesman Stéphane Le Foll said, as cited by RTL radio. He added that the incident was “a great tragedy.”

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described the Magnanville killings as an “abject act of terrorism.” He was speaking after an emergency meeting with French President Francois Hollande and Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas.

France is facing a “very large scale” terror threat, President Hollande said Tuesday morning at a meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.
“France is not the only country concerned [by the terrorist threat], as we have seen, again, in the United States, in Orlando,”he said.

READ MORE: Magnanville attack: ISIS claims link to Paris suburb stabber who killed police officer & his partner

The attacker, reportedly the officer’s neighbor, shouted “Allah u Akbar,” Le Parisien cited witnesses as saying.

The couple’s son, who was also taken hostage by the suspect, was rescued by RAID.

Unconfirmed reports have emerged suggesting that the attacker might have links to Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL). Islamic State's Amaq news agency cited its source as saying that the assailant was a member of their group.

BFMTV cited unconfirmed reports on social media that claimed that the assailant filmed the attack live on Facebook. The video and as well as the Facebook page it was posted on, alleged to belong to Abballa, were soon de-leted, the channel added.

Later French officials confirmed to AP that the assailant made a video of his attack.