A man armed with a hammer shouted "this is for Syria" and wounded a policeman before being shot and wounded by other officers outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, one of France's most famous tourist sites.
The Paris prosecutor's office swiftly launched a counter-terrorism investigation into Tuesday's attack, the first since President Emmanuel Macron won power last month and days before the first round of a parliamentary election in France.
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the attacker was carrying the identification card of an Algerian student and preliminary information indicated he acted alone.
Dozens of armed police sealed off the area and put the Gothic cathedral into lockdown with nearly 1000 people inside.
The incident came three days after militants drove a van at high speed into pedestrians in London before stabbing revellers on the street and in nearby bars, killing seven people and wounding dozens. That followed a suicide bombing in the northern English city of Manchester that killed 22 people.
