PARIS — A French police official says a policewoman shot in an early morning attack on the southern edge of Paris has died.

The officer was stopping to investigate a traffic accident when an assailant opened fire, hitting her and a street sweeper. Emmanuel Cravello of the Alliance police union said she later died of her injuries.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says the attacker in the shooting Thursday remained at large. He and Cravello cautioned against jumping to any conclusions about the attack, which has not been linked to the assault on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which left two police officers among the dead.

In the Thursday shooting, he said the officer had stopped to investigate a traffic accident when the firing started.

“There was an officer in front of a white car and a man running away who shot,” said Ahmed Sassi, who saw the shooting from his home nearby.

He said the shooter wore dark clothes but no mask. “It didn’t look like a big gun because he held it with one hand,” Sassi said.

Cazeneuve left an emergency government meeting to travel to the scene of Thursday’s shooting. France is on its highest level of alert after the deadly attacks at Charlie Hebdo’s central Paris offices.


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