PARIS — The Latest on an attack outside the Louvre Museum in Paris (all times local):
11:25 a.m.
Police in Paris say a man attacked soldiers when they told him he couldn’t enter an underground shopping mall beneath the sprawling Louvre Museum with his bags.
Yves Lefebvre, a police union official, says the man tried to stab one of the soldiers. The attacker was shot five times.
Lefebvre says police found two machetes on the man.
Police have sealed off entrances around where the attack took place and closed the area to vehicles, snarling traffic in a busy part of central Paris.
The situation is mainly calm, with confused tourists being gently shooed away by officers.
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11:05 a.m.
The Paris police chief says a man armed with a machete and shouting “God is great” in Arabic launched himself at soldiers and police officers near the Louvre Museum. One of the soldiers shot the attacker five times, gravely wounding him.
Police chief Michel Cadot says the attacker was also carrying two backpacks but they were later found not to contain any explosives.
One soldier had a minor scalp injury.
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10:40 a.m.
Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated.
The Paris police press office said it has no other details other than that a soldier opened fire.
A police union official, Luc Poignant, told BFM-TV that an attacker assaulted the soldier and that the area is now being secured.
The museum in the center of Paris is one of the French capital’s biggest tourist attractions.
Soldiers on patrol are part of security measures that have beefed-up in the wake of terror attacks in France in 2015 and 2016.
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