Paris police kill man armed with meat cleaver on Charlie Hebdo anniversary

PARIS (Reuters) - French police shot dead a man wielding a meat cleaver after he tried to enter a police station on Thursday, the anniversary of militant attacks in Paris, shouting "Allahu akbar" (God is Greatest) and wearing what turned out to be a fake suicide belt. The Paris prosecutor said the man was also carrying a mobile phone and a sheet of paper bearing the Islamic State flag and a claim of responsibility by the militant group written in Arabic. According to a judicial source, Ali Sallah, was a Moroccan born in 1995 in Casablanca. He was homeless and known to police for theft in 2012 in the Var region of southern France. French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told French television i-Tele that from what was known so far, the man had no known links to violent Islamist radicalism. She suggested he might have been mentally unstable. Thursday is the first anniversary of deadly Islamist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in the French capital and Sallah's attack came just minutes after President Francois Hollande had given a commemoration speech elsewhere in Paris. Security concerns intensified further in France in November when 130 people were killed in shootings and suicide bombings targeting a Paris music hall, bars, restaurants and a stadium. Those attacks were claimed by Islamic State, the militant group that controls swathes of Iraq and Syria. Several of the militants involved were, like the Hebdo killers, French-born. In his statement, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said a terrorism inquiry had been opened into Thursday's attack. Source:Reuters