This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Parts of central Paris were sealed off on Thursday after an employee at the city’s police headquarters stabbed and killed four colleagues before being shot dead.

The man, who worked in the technology department, reportedly stabbed a colleague in his office with a ceramic knife before turning it on others, with the last attacked in the courtyard outside the historic building near Notre Dame Cathedral.

The victims were three male police officers from the anti-terrorist department at the prefecture and a female administrator in the public security department. A female employee of the human resources department was seriously injured and was operated on at the Percy military hospital.

Officials did not say anything about the motive for the attack.

Confirming the deaths, the interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said from the scene: “He worked with these colleagues and had never shown any behavioural difficulties or anything to raise an alarm.”

“Our thoughts are with their families and of those who were injured ... the news regarding the injured is reassuring.

“The inquiry has started. I am thinking of the police here and around France. Everyone is shocked and profoundly hurt by what has happened here.”

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, both visited the scene. The man, aged 45, had worked in the technology department since 2003.

Public prosecutor, Rémy Heitz said an investigation had been opened into “murder and attempted murder of public agents” and that anti-terrorist investigators were evaluating what had happened, for any terrorist links.

“Searches are currently taking place at the suspect’s home and other investigations will be taking place in the next few hours,” he said. The attackers wife had been brought into police custody but not charged, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

French media quoted police union officials suggesting the motive may have been personal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emergency services at the scene in Paris. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA

Loic Travers, a union official, said he was unaware of any problems that could have pushed the “ordinary administrator” to kill his colleagues.

“There is a chaotic atmosphere in the prefecture … obviously it’s shocking. The colleagues who saw what happened will be marked by this for the rest of their careers.”

Emery Siamandi, a prefecture employee, said: “I was on the stairs when I heard shots and thought it was not normal. After I saw three police officers crying and other colleagues crying. At first I thought a police officer had killed himself; afterwards I learned someone had killed the officers. The officer who killed the man was crying.”

The attack came a day after thousands of officers marched in Paris to protest against low wages, long hours and an increasing suicide rate in their ranks.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People are held at a security perimeter after the incident. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA

French police have been targeted by extremists several times in recent years. In 2017, a gunman opened fire on the Champs-Élysées in central Paris, killing one officer before he was shot dead.

In 2016, an attack inspired by Islamic State killed a police officer and his partner, an administrator, in front of their child at their home outside Paris.