Man shot dead in French city of Avignon after threatening police
29 October 2020, 11:38 | Updated: 29 October 2020, 15:39
An armed man who threatened police in the French city of Avignon has been shot dead.
The incident took place just hours after a man stormed into a church in Nice, leaving three dead.
The man was shot dead at around 11.15am today in the city in the south east of France.
Officers opened fire with non-lethal weaponry which failed to subdue him before opening fire with handguns, reports outlet Le Figaro.
A Saudi state-run news agency said a man stabbed a guard at the French consulate in Jeddah, wounding the guard before he was arrested. It was not immediately clear if the incidents were linked to the attack in Nice.
This morning three died in the knife attack at the church in Nice.
Police enter church involved in Nice knife attack
The suspected attacker was shot and arrested after killing worshippers at the Notre Dame Church.
A terrorism investigation is under way.
Images on French media showed the neighbourhood locked down and surrounded by police and emergency vehicles.
Latest update on Nice attack from Peter Allen
France is under alert for Islamic extremist acts amid tensions over caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed published by satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo, and after two other recent attacks in France with links to the cartoons.
Less than two weeks ago, an attacker decapitated a French middle school teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed for a class on free speech.
Those caricatures were published by Charlie Hebdo and cited by the men who gunned down the newspaper's editorial meeting in 2015.
