OREANDA-NEWS.  A man armed with a knife has attacked an officer at the commissariat of the French city of Cannes in the south of the country, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanen said on Twitter.

"A police officer from Cannes was stabbed to death. The attacker was neutralised by his colleagues," Darmanen wrote, adding that he himself was immediately dispatched to the scene.

French TV channel BFMTV, citing a police source, reports that the policeman who was stabbed was not injured because of his flak jacket. According to the newspaper, at around 6:30am, a man, who has not been identified to date, opened the door of a parked police car in which three policemen were sitting and stabbed the man who was driving the car. He then went around the car and tried to attack the second policeman, but the third man managed to use a firearm.

"No one was killed, the circumstances of the attack are being investigated," Cannes Mayor David Lisnard said on Twitter.

According to BFM.TV and the AFP news agency, citing sources, the attacker struck, saying he was acting "on behalf of the Prophet".

Earlier, in October, French law enforcers, in cooperation with US intelligence agencies, detained an Islamist trying to buy a Kalashnikov assault rifle. US intelligence learned that the 27-year-old from the department of Seine-Saint-Denis (north of Paris) had contacted arms dealers via the Darknet and reported it to French counterparts.