Emmanuel Macron is still in N'Djamena, where he came to attend the funeral of Chadian President Idriss Deby, when he becomes aware of the tragedy.
A police officer was stabbed to death, "cowardly murdered" will say the Prime Minister, in the Rambouillet (Yvelines) police station this Friday at midday.
The Head of State, expected in Paris in the evening, immediately asks Jean Castex and Gérald Darmanin to go there.
The atmosphere is "very heavy, very heavy, necessarily," says an advisor present.
“Tragic,” breathes another.
The national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office takes up the investigation in the course of the afternoon.
"The fight against Islamist terrorism, we will not give up," assures in the wake, via Twitter, the head of state, informed in real time.
"Our determination to fight terrorism in all its forms is more than ever intact", had hammered the Prime Minister, shortly before, on the scene of the tragedy.
The Minister of the Interior announces a reinforcement of security in front of the police stations and gendarmeries.
"No fatalism"
“We won't give up. These words of the Head of State are the same as those used on October 29. It was the day of the attack that struck the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice, two weeks after the one that claimed the life of Samuel Paty. The message of the executive, too, remains: "No fatalism", hammers those around him. In the Yvelines, painful memories flock. "We all remember the odious Magnanville attack in 2016, and more recently the assassination of Samuel Paty," blows Jean Castex at the exit of the police station. A repetition of the tragedies likely to redouble the criticisms of a part of the right and the extreme right, even though Emmanuel Macron had started the week with an offensive on the security front.
"Peaceful life, Emmanuel Macron? "Squeaks LR deputy Guillaume Peltier, referring to Macron's words at the start of the week in Le Figaro, when his colleague Eric Ciotti shifts:" Without concrete actions, the French will continue to fall. "And the president of the RN, Marine Le Pen, to add:" Emmanuel Macron, it's chaos. We must stop laxity. " The tone is set. “Blood is still flowing, that they are already doing politics,” lambasted an adviser to the executive. Another sighs: "The field of the traditional right is taken by the government, so that they are in the bidding. The theme splits the left. This debate will be complicated… ”