French police arrest 9 after teacher beheaded

Attacker was of Chechen origin

French police have arrested nine people after a suspected Islamist sympathiser beheaded a school teacher on the street of a Paris suburb on Friday, police sources said.

Investigators were trying to establish whether the attacker, who was shot dead by police, had acted alone or had accomplices. French media reported that he was an 18-year-old of Chechen origin.

Witnesses heard the assailant shout “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Greatest”, a police source said. His victim, a history teacher, had earlier this month shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a civics class on freedom of expression.

The had had approached pupils in the street and asked them to point out his victim, anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said on Saturday.

President Emmanuel Macron called the incident Islamist terrorism.

Four relatives of the attacker, including a minor, were detained in the immediate hours after the attack. Five more were detained overnight, among them two parents of pupils at the College du Bois d'Aulne, where the teacher was employed.

Muslim leaders condemned the killing, which many public figures perceived as an attack on the essence of French statehood and its values of secularism.