A history teacher, who had recently shown caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in class, was decapitated outside his school on Friday, reported AFP. The attacker was shot by police as they tried to arrest him and he later died of his injuries, AFP quoted police’s statement. 

The assault took place at around 5:00 pm (local time) in Conflans Saint-Honorine, a northwestern suburb around 30 kilometres from the centre of the French capital.

The scene was soon cordoned off and a bomb disposal unit dispatched because of the suspected presence of an explosive vest, a police source told AFP. 

French President Emmanuel Macron who visited the crime scene said the killing bore the hallmarks of “an Islamist terrorist attack,” AFP reported. Visibly moved, the President said that “the entire nation” stood ready to defend teachers and that “obscurantism will not win”.

France has seen a wave of Islamist violence since the 2015 terror attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in the capital.

Meanwhile, four people, including a minor, have been arrested, a judicial source told AFP. All were related to the assailant, the source added.

The victim was a history teacher who recently showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as part of a class discussion on freedom of expression, AFP quoted the police as saying. 

Parent of one of the pupils told AFP that the teacher might have stirred “controversy” by asking Muslim pupils to leave the room before showing the cartoons.

The teacher “simply said to the Muslim children: ‘Leave, I don’t want it to hurt your feelings,’ the parent told AFP. 

The identity card found on the assailant indicated he was born in Moscow in 2002, AFP quoted a judicial source. Although, investigators are waiting for formal identification.

Police said they were investigating a tweet posted from an account that showed a picture of the teacher’s head, and which has since been shut down.

It was unclear whether the message, which contained a threat against Macron — described as “the leader of the infidels” — had been posted by the attacker, they said.

France’s parliament suspended Friday’s debate after news of the decapitation, with session president Hugues Renson, visibly moved, calling the attack “abominable”.

MPs stood as Renson said that “in the name of all of us, I want to honour the memory of the victim.”

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer tweeted: “The Republic is under attack.”

The killing comes as security forces have been on high alert during the ongoing trial of suspected accomplices of the attackers in the January 2015 terror attacks in Paris, which also saw a policewoman gunned down in the street.

And last month, charges were brought against a 25-year old Pakistani man after he wounded two people with a meat cleaver to avenge the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed by Charlie Hebdo, which purportedly prompted the 2015 killings.

It also comes just days after a follower of the Islamic State militant group who attacked a police officer with a hammer outside the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris was sentenced to 28 years in jail.

Seventeen people were killed in the three-day spree that heralded a wave of Islamist violence in France that has so far claimed more than 250 lives.