Man with fake explosive belt shot dead by police

A man who was shot dead trying to enter a northern Paris police station on Thursday was wearing a fake explosive belt, a police union source told Reuters.

"The man did have a belt, but it was a fake. The bomb-disposal unit confirmed it was a fake," the police union source said.

A spokesman for the interior ministry had said earlier that the man may have been wearing an explosive belt when he entered the police station shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) but that it was too early to say whether it was operational or not.

The incident took place just moments after President Francois Hollande had given a speech to security forces in an another part of Paris to mark the anniversary of last year's deadly Islamist militant attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in the French capital.

News of the attack came just after President Francois Hollande concluded a somber speech at police headquarters to mark the anniversary of the killings at Charlie Hebdo's offices on Jan 7, 2015.

With France also still grieving from the massacre of 130 people by jihadists in Paris in November, Hollande used his speech to call for greater cooperation between the security services.

"Faced with these adversaries, it is essential that every service - police, gendarmerie, intelligence, military - work in perfect harmony, with the greatest transparency, and that they share all the information at their disposal," the president said.

Travel restrictions

Many of the attackers in both January's rampage and the attacks in November were known to French security services, having either traveled abroad to fight with extremists or been prevented from doing so.

Hollande said that since the attack on Charlie Hebdo, nearly 200 people in France had been placed under travel restrictions to prevent them joining up with Islamic State in Syria or Iraq.

The president said the three police officers killed in January's attacks "died so that we could live in freedom".

The president reiterated his pledge to boost the number of police and armed gendarmes by 5,000.

Reuters - AFP