New Delhi: A teacher in France was beheaded after a discussion with students on caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The horrifying incident took place in the town of Eragny, in the Val d'Oise region northwest of Paris. According to media reports, the 47-year-old male teacher taught history in a middle school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine and had opened a discussion with students on caricatures of Prophet Muhammad on Friday.

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The report says that the police have shot the suspected killer dead who according to a report by IANS was an 18-year-old unknown to the police. A police official who was not named said that the suspect who was armed with a knife and an airsoft gun was about 600 meters (yards) from where the male teacher was killed. A report in the French newspaper Le Monde, said that some Muslim parents had complained about the teacher’s decision to use some of the cartoons for the discussion in school.

The French anti-terrorism prosecutor has opened an investigation into the slaying for murder with a suspected terrorist motive, the prosecutor's office said. A report by The Associated Press says that the teacher had been threatened after opening the discussion.

The French President Emmanuel Macron who visited the school after the incident has condemned the gruesome attack.

"One of our fellow citizens was murdered today because he was teaching students freedom of expression. It is a teacher that this terrorist killed because he wanted to destroy the Republic...destroy the possibility of making our children free citizens," said Macron in a report by IANS.

Former President Francois Hollande also took to Twitter to denounce the incident and wrote "a terrible assassination of a teacher". He also "we need to be united in the face of barbarism and obscurantism."

It was the second terrorism-related incident since the opening of an ongoing trial on the newsroom massacre in Jan 2015 at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Last month, two journalists were stabbed near the former Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.