A teacher was killed in a knife attack in a school in the northern French city of Arras on Friday and the probe was handed to the anti-terrorism prosecutor's office.

The regional Pas-de-Calais authority said the suspected assailant, who also wounded a second teacher and a school security guard in the attack, was arrested.

The suspect was a Russian-born Chechen and former student of the Lycee Gambetta High School where the attack happened, a police source said. He was on a watchlist of people known as a potential security risk in connection to radical Islamism, the police source added.

The police could not confirm local media reports that he shouted "Allah-u Akbar". BFM TV reported he was about 20 years old.

Beijing incident

A 50-year-old Israeli man who works at the Israeli embassy in Beijing was stabbed on Friday in front of a supermarket, Chinese police and the Israeli government said.

Beijing police said they had arrested a suspect, a 53-year-old foreign man. “The employee was transferred to hospital and he is in a stable condition,” an Israeli government statement said.