.png)
"The investigators want to be sure whether he had or did not have accomplices".
The attack overshadowed the last day of campaigning for Sunday's presidential election first round, bringing issues surrounding Islamist militancy to the fore.
Mr Hollande held an emergency meeting with the prime minister on Thursday night and will convene a meeting of the defence council on Friday morning.
After killing the officer and injuring his colleagues just a few hundred metres from the Arc de Triomphe, the gunman was shot dead in return fire while trying to flee on foot, police sources told Agence France-Presse.
In 2003, the man was convicted of attempted homicide in the shootings of two police officers, the Associated Press reported. Three members of his family were detained for questioning.
Observers had long feared an attack ahead of Sunday's election in France, following a string of atrocities by extremists since 2015 that have claimed over 230 lives.
A French Interior Ministry spokesperson said he was an "individual known by the judiciary and police services - a unsafe individual".
Republican Francois Fillon, the National Front's Marine Le Pen, centrist Emmanuel Macron, and Socialist Benoit Hamon all cancelled events planned for Friday and instead made televised statements about how they'd fight terrorism.
Le Pen Gains After Terror Attack In Last-Minute Poll Before Election
Le Parisien newspaper said he had done jail time for, among other things, shooting a police officer. Le Pen called for the expulsion of terror suspects and the immediate closure of France's borders .
In addition to the note near the body of the Frenchman Karim Cheurfi, police found a Koran in his vehicle at the scene of Thursday's attack, the sources told AFP.
Left-wing insurgent Jean-Luc Mélenchon warned against allowing panic to "interrupt democracy".
Australia's prime minister has offered his country's prayers for police officers who were shot in Paris and urged Australians in Europe to be wary. The man "then ran away, managing to shoot and wound two other policemen".
The prosecutor added that the man had nothing to do with the attack.
The slain officer was 30 years old, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said. One of the wounded officers was critically injured but is improving, he said. A foreign tourist was also slightly wounded in her knee by shrapnel during the shooting.
"Once again we reiterate that terrorism is the first and most urgent danger for peace, stability and global security", Ghasemi said. Obama's spokesman said the former USA president, who is popular in France, was not making a formal endorsement.
Amid the turmoil, police already raided the attacker's family home in eastern Paris looking for evidence of links with the so-called Islamic State as the group claimed he was acting on their behalf.
Quoting President Donald Trump, Pence said "we have to be strong, and we have to be vigilant".
Comments