PARIS: French police on Tuesday shot and wounded a woman who was making threats at a train station in Paris, a police source told AFP.
According to witnesses the woman, who was completely veiled, shouted "Allahu akbar" ("God is Greatest") and "made threats", the source said, adding that "police fired because they feared for their safety".
After passengers on a suburban train alerted police, agents managed to "isolate" the woman at the Bibliotheque Francois Mitterrand station on the capital's south bank, the source said.
She threatened "to blow herself up", the Paris prosecutor's office said, adding that police fired one shot, inflicting a life-threatening injury.
Police have launched two investigations, prosecutors said. One will probe the woman's actions, while another will elucidate whether the police's use of a firearm was justified.
France has been under "attack alert" since October 13, when a teacher in the northern city of Arras was stabbed to death by an Islamist former pupil.