Police officers speak to a driver as they close off a road during a hostage situation in Normandy, France. (Photo: AP)

Paris: Two attackers seized hostages Tuesday in a church near the Normandy city of Rouen, killing one hostage by slitting his throat before being shot and killed by police, a French security official said.

Another person inside the church was seriously injured and is hovering between life and death, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.

He would not confirm French media reports that the slain hostage was a priest.

The identities of the attackers and motive for the attack are unclear, according to the security official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.

Read: French PM Manuell Valls expresses 'horror at barbaric attack on church'

French President Francois Hollande and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve were heading to the northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where the hostage-taking took place, Brandet said.

Brandet, speaking later on BFM TV, said the RAID special intervention force was searching the church and its perimeter for possible explosives. Terrorism investigators have been summoned, he said.

France is currently on high alert after an attack in Nice on Bastille Day - July 14 - that killed 84 people and a string of deadly attacks last year claimed by the Islamic State group that killed 147 victims.

France is also under a state of emergency and has extra police presence in the wake of the Nice attack in which a man barreled his truck down the city's famed Promenade des Anglais, mowing down holiday crowds.