A driver with a gun has died after ramming a police van on the Champs-Élysées in a car filled with weapons and a gas bomb.
His car burst into flames moments after impact having deliberately aimed at a line of police vans with a boot full of Kalashnikov rifles, handguns and gas bottles.
A police officer was videoed stripping clothes from the unconscious assailant to check for a suicide bomb as the assailant, who was a known extremist in France, lay dying in the street.
Witnesses in the capital said he heard shots being fired and smoke coming from the silver Renault Megane which was used by the 31-year-old perpetrator in what is being considered an attempted suicide attack, though nobody was injured.