This is an ongoing event. a gunman is holding 70 hostage at a retirement home for monks in Montpellier, France.

Terrorism has not been declared the motive, but it has not been ruled out.

PARIS (AP) — French police searched Friday for a masked gunman suspected of stabbing an elderly woman to death in a retirement home for Catholic missionaries in southern France, authorities said.

An unusually large police operation was launched to search for the suspected attacker, believed to be armed with a shotgun and a knife. The identity of the assailant and motive for the killing were unclear.

The press service for the gendarmes, or military police, couldn't say whether the incident was linked to a terrorist act. Security at religious and other sites has been increased after a string of Islamic extremist attacks on France.

A gendarme service spokesman said early Friday that more than 100 members of the security forces were dispatched to the village of Montferrier-sur-Lez, near the city of Montpellier in the southern tip of France. The spokesman was not authorized to be publicly named.