FRENCH anti-terrorist police stepped up their surveillance of homegrown Islamist radicals on Sunday after a 20-year-old man was shot dead after staging a knife attack on a police station.
Bertrand Nzohabonayo, a Muslim convert born in Burundi, was said to have shouted Allahu Akbar (God is great) as he struck officers in the Loire valley town of Joue-les-Tours. He cut the throat of one and slashed two others before being hit by four bullets.
The seriously wounded policeman is expected to survive, while his colleagues suffered light injuries.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, pledged new efforts to track Islamists who have been inspired by internet propaganda.
Nzohabonayo had convictions for petty crime and had posted the black flag of Islamic State on Facebook.
About 300 French citizens are fighting with Isis in Syria and Iraq. In May 2013, a French Islamist stabbed a soldier in a Paris shopping centre. In March 2012, seven people were shot dead in Toulouse by Mohamed Merah. In May, Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, shot dead four people at the Brussels Jewish museum. Sympathy for Isis is deep-rooted in the French housing estates which are dominated by immigrants from northern and sub-Saharan Africa.
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