Valery Hache, AFP | Soldiers stand guard next to a police van outside the Jewish Community Centre in Nice where three troops were attacked by a knife-wielding man on February 3, 2015

A knife-wielding man on Tuesday attacked three French soldiers on an anti-terror patrol in front of a Jewish community centre in the southern city of Nice, police officials said.

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Sarah Baron, a police union official in the city of Nice, said the suspect had hidden the knife in his bag and was detained shortly after the attack.

According to a security source, the man had been expelled from Turkey last week and was interrogated by French intelligence services upon his return to France.

Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi told BFM television that a possible accomplice had also been apprehended in connection with Tuesday’s attack and that the knife-wielding assailant was carrying an identity card with the name Moussa Coulibaly.

However, there was "apparently" no link to Amédy Coulibaly, who killed four Jewish shoppers in a kosher supermarket during the Paris attacks last month that left a total of 17 people dead.

Another police official said the attacker pulled a knife at least 20 centimetres-long out of a bag and set upon one of the soldiers, injuring him in the chin. He then swiped at two other soldiers - one in the face and the other in the forearm - before being apprehended by riot police stationed near the building, which houses the city’s Jewish community centre.

A manager at the centre, who did not want to be identified because she was afraid, said the attack occurred around lunch and that no one was inside the office at the time.

The attacker, aged about 30, had a record of theft and violence, a police official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. His motive was not yet clear, the official added.

France has been on high alert since the attacks in the Paris region by three Islamic extremists that left 20 people dead, including the gunmen. More than 10,000 soldiers have been deployed around the country to protect sensitive locations, including major shopping areas, synagogues, mosques and transit hubs.

Eight arrested in Paris and Lyon

Earlier Tuesday, French authorities arrested seven men and a woman suspected of involvement in a network to send fighters to join Islamic extremists in Syria.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said those arrested in the Paris and Lyon areas are not suspected of links to the January 7-9 attacks in Paris.

Police are trying to thwart new violence and find possible accomplices to three radical Islamic gunmen who attacked a kosher grocery and satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The men claimed allegiance to extremists in the Mideast.

Three of those arrested Tuesday had traveled to Syria and returned in December 2014, a French official said, though it was unclear whether they joined the Islamic State group or another group.

The official said the network began sending French fighters to Syria in May 2013, and that at least one of them was killed there. Other members of the network are still in Syria.

The group did not appear to be involved in any particular plot, or linked to any other networks already broken up in France in recent months, the official said, who was not authorised to be publicly identified discussing security matters.

France has seen hundreds of homegrown radicals join extremists abroad, most linked to the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

French authorities have come under criticism for being overzealous in cracking down on potential threats since the attacks, arresting dozens for comments seen as defending terrorism and notably questioning an 8-year-old boy.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP)

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