#French police chief and partner killed in stabbing claimed by #Isis

President François Hollande has convened crisis talks after a man convicted for terrorist offences and claiming allegiance to the Islamic State stabbed a French police commander to death in front of his house outside Paris, then killed his partner who also worked for the police.

The 42-year-old police commander was in plain clothes when he was stabbed to death as he arrived home at around 8.30pm on Monday night in a quiet residential area of Magnanville, north-west of Paris.

The attacker then entered the house and held hostage the commander’s partner – who also worked in the local police administration – and the couple’s three-year-old son.


Hollande called it “incontestably a terrorist act” and said France was facing a terror threat “of a very large scale”.

Elite police squads rushed to the scene, sealed off the neighbourhood, cut electricity and negotiated with the attacker who told them he was a soldier for Isis and had sworn allegiance to the group.

Shortly afterwards loud detonations were heard as police stormed the house and killed the assailant. They found the woman dead and rescued the couple’s son alive.

The attacker was identified by Le Monde and RMC radio as Larossi Abballa, 25, who was known to police for radicalism and already had a terrorism conviction.

He had been sentenced to three years in prison, six months suspended, in 2013 for “criminal association in view to preparing terrorist attacks” over his role in a recruitment network of jihadists linked to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

French media reported Abballa had recently been under close police surveillance as he had featured in the entourage of another man who had left for Syria.

The French journalist and jihadhist expert David Thomson reported that Abballa had used Facebook live to post images of the attack — a video which is being examined by police. Thomson reported that while the attacker filmed himself, the three-year-old boy was behind him on the sofa. The attacker said: “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with him.”

The attacker lived alone in nearby Mantes-la-Jolie, where the woman worked in the local police station and where the police commander had previously worked before being posted to nearby Mureaux.

The police officer who died was named in the French media as Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, described as an assistant chief in the nearby district of Les Mureaux. He was reported to have been wearing civilian clothes at the time.

Magnanville is about 35 miles north-west of central Paris.


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