MARSEILLE, France -- A man with a knife stabbed two women to death Sunday at the main train station in the southern French city of Marseille as he reportedly shouted "Allahu akbar!" -- an attack the Islamic State militant group claimed was the work of one its "soldiers."
French soldiers shot the man to death, and authorities were working to determine whether he had links to Islamic extremism.
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, who went to Marseille to meet with authorities and troops on the scene, said police have video that shows a man attacking a woman and running away, then returning and attacking a second woman.
The video shows the same man running toward soldiers who were rushing to Marseille Saint Charles train station. The soldiers fatally shot him, Collomb said.
Some witnesses reported hearing the assailant shout "Allahu akbar," Arabic for "God is great," Collomb said. He said the attack might have been of a "terrorist" nature but that authorities could not be sure until the investigation progressed.
The Paris prosecutor's office, which oversees all terror cases in France, said it had opened a counterterrorism investigation into the Marseille attack.
Police sources said that one of the victims was stabbed and one had her throat slit. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.
The Islamic State-linked Aamaq news agency said in a statement Sunday night that the assailant was acting in response to Islamic State calls to target countries in the U.S.-led coalition fighting extremists in Syria and Iraq.
The statement did not provide details or evidence of a direct link to the attacker. France has been part of the anti-Islamic State coalition since 2014 and has been repeatedly targeted by militant attacks.
Last month, four American college students were attacked with acid at the same Marseille train station. French authorities said the female assailant who doused the four Boston College students was suffering from a mental illness, and her actions were not investigated as a terror attack.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was "deeply outraged" by Sunday's "barbarous" knife attack. In a tweet, Macron paid tribute to the French soldiers who responded "with cool head and efficiency."
The French government last month decided to maintain the so-called Sentinelle Operation military force of 7,000 soldiers that was created to protect sensitive sites after deadly extremist attacks in 2015.
Saint Charles train station was evacuated and closed for several hours after the attack, and Marseille police warned people to avoid the area, tweeting that an operation was underway. Soldiers and police took up positions outside the station.
The train station was partially reopened in the late afternoon, and French authorities allowed train traffic to and from Marseille to gradually resume.
Since a 2012 assault carried out by a gunman on a Jewish school and soldiers left seven people dead, France has endured a series of attacks and near-misses from extremists with the same background.
Beginning with that attack, Islamic extremists -- most of them homegrown -- have killed nearly 250 people in France, far more than anywhere else in Western Europe.
"France entered a new era. Beginning in 2012, we entered an age of terrorism, where before we believed ourselves protected. It was a turning point in French history," said Mathieu Guidere, a professor of Islamic studies in Paris and author of Islamic Fundamentalism.
Information for this article was contributed by Sylvie Corbet, Lori Hinnant and Philippe Sotto of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/02/2017