Teacher beheaded in Paris suburb for 'showing caricatures of Prophet Muhammad' to students, attacker shot dead

The victim's body was found in Éragny-sur-Oise, northwest of the capital, according to the French National Anti-Terror Prosecutor's office as reported by CNN.

The police later shot dead the attacker, reports said.

Police have identified the victim as 47-year-old Samuel Paty, a teacher of history and geography, who had taken a class about freedom of expression earlier in the month, reports BBC.

He is said to have shown the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad while talking about the Charlie Hebdo case, and had reportedly advised Muslim students to leave the room if they thought they might be offended, BBC reported.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, some Muslim parents complained to the school about the slain teacher's decision to use one or more of the cartoons as part of a discussion about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, CNN reported.

As per media reports, the teacher had received unspecified threats for the class he had taken where he had allegedly shown the caricatures.

This incident occured at a time in the country when a trial is under way in Paris over a 2015 Islamist assault on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The magazine was targeted for publishing the cartoons.

Meanwhile, the police identified the attacker as an 18-year-old man of Chechen origin.

He was shot dead by the police near the scene of Friday's killing.

French President Emmanuel Macron called the murder of a teacher in the Conflans-Saint-Honorine commune near Paris a terrorist attack.

"Our compatriot was killed for teaching, for teaching children freedom of speech, freedom to believe or not to believe. Our compatriot was the victim of a terrorist attack," Macron, who arrived at the scene on Friday evening, said.

Country's  Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer also condemned the incident.

So far, nine people have been arrested in connection with the killing.

According to the French broadcaster, law enforcement officers have detained four family members of the attacker — his parents, grandfather and 17-year-old brother — in the Evreux commune in the French region of Normandy, reports Sputnik news agency.

After that, five more people were detained — the father of one of the teacher's students, who posted a video on social networks, in which he complained about the teacher's attitude, a friend of this man and three other people. 

All the five were detained in the Yvelines department in the north-central region of Ile-de-France. 

Last month, a knife attack incident close to the former office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the French capital Paris had left at least four people hurt.