Police kill man wielding knife at Paris station

French police have shot dead a man wielding a knife who threatened them at Paris’s Gare du Nord train station.

The man attacked two police officers on patrol at the station with a 30cm (12in) knife, police said.

An anti-police inscription was found on the man’s knife, reports say. No police officers were injured in the incident which occurred at about 07:00 local time (06:00 GMT) on Monday.

The authorities believed the incident was not terrorism-related.

“The police used their firearms, thus eliminating all danger, both for themselves and for travellers,” Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin wrote in a tweet (in French).

An eyewitness told BFMTV: “I was climbing up the stairs that go up to the Eurostar platform, I heard screams on the right. I saw a man, quite tall, a large knife in his hand with a very impressive blade who threatened two or three policemen who were armed… The police made us go up on the platform, made us lie on the ground.”

Transport Minister, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, later told RMC TV the man was known to the police “as someone who wandered around in the station”.

“He appears to have attacked the police with a knife, forcing them to use their weapon.”

A security perimeter has been set up at the departure level of mainline trains. Several trains were delayed as a result, including international Eurostar trains, BFMTV reports.

An investigation has been opened for attempted homicide, the Paris prosecutor’s office was quoted as saying by Le Parisien.

The Gare du Nord station is one of Europe’s busiest, serving as a hub for high-speed trains to a number of countries, including Eurostar services to and from London.

The main defendant in the trial over the 2015 Paris attacks has denied killing or hurting anybody.

Prosecutors say Salah Abdeslam, 32, is the only surviving member of the IS cell that targeted Paris that night, killing 130 people.

In court on Wednesday, he restated his support for the Islamic State group, but said he chose at the last minute not to detonate his explosives.

Salah Abdeslam is the only defendant to be directly accused of murder.

Prosecutors believe his suicide belt malfunctioned before he escaped, but Abdeslam said he had changed his mind. -BBC