ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack on police officers on the Champs-Élysées in Paris this evening that left one officer dead and two others wounded.
The terrorist group released a message through its news agency Amaq saying that the attacker was "one of the fighters for the Islamic State."
The assailant was killed but has not been publicly identified, a police spokesperson said.
French President François Hollande said that one bystander was injured during a shootout between police and the attacker and that the leads so far indicated the attack was of a "terrorist nature."
French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henri Brandet said during a press briefing that a man exited his car and started a shooting at a police car with an automatic weapon around 9 p.m. The attacker continued shooting at police as he attempted to flee the scene and and was killed by police in an exchange of gunfire, Brandet said.
A terrorism investigation into the attack had been opened, the Paris prosecutor's office said.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said that Parisians would not not give in to the threat of terrorism.
"Faced with this ordeal, I know that the determination of Parisians to defend their way of life and their values is complete," Hidalgo wrote on Twitter hours after the attack.
Terrorism is a demonic act
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