Paris school attacker 'claimed support for Isis and said this is only the start'

A teacher was stabbed in the side and throat in the incident, which ministers called 'an act of enormous gravity', while the hooded assailant escaped on foot

A man who stabbed a teacher in a Paris school on Monday morning declared his allegiance to Isis and shouted it was "only the start".

Investigators said a hooded attacker was believed to have entered the nursery school in the northern suburb of Aubervilliers unarmed, and seized a small pair of scissors and a paper cutter in the classroom.

An eyewitness told police the man stabbed his victim in the side and throat before declaring: "It is for Daesh (another name for Isis). It is a warning. It is only the start."

He then escaped the Jean Perron nursery on foot, shortly after he entered at around 7.15am Paris time. Police described him as wearing a balaclava or hood, gloves and white decorators' overalls.

The male teacher, reported to be 42 years old but not named, was taken to hospital and is not thought to be in a life-threatening condition.

The French education minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who visited the school after the attack, said: “This is an act of enormous gravity…We will continue to tighten security because, yes, schools feel that they are under threat."

According to French media reports, a major search has been launched to find the attacker and the Paris prosecutor's anti-terror branch has opened an investigation.

According to the AFP News Agency, a recent edition of Isis's French-language propaganda magazine, Dar-al-Islam, specifically urged followers in France to kill teachers, describing them as "enemies of Allah".

Religion in France's strictly secular schools has been a challenging issue for years, after its Parliament passed a law banning the wearing of clearly religious clothing or accessories in the classroom.

Paris itself has been at a heightened level of terror alert since the coordinated terror attacks across the capital on 13 November, which killed 130 people.