French prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation into the attack on police officers on Paris' famed Champs-Elysees boulevard.
The Paris prosecutor's office said counterterrorism investigators are involved in the probe into the Thursday attack that left a police officer and the attacker dead.
Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet says that police officers killed the attacker. He said one police officer was killed and two others were seriously injured and hospitalized.
Paris police spokeswoman Johanna Primevert says unidentified gunman appeared to be alone when he allegedly opened fire on a police vehicle.
A Paris resident, says the gunfire that erupted sent scores of tourists fleeing into side streets.
Badi Ftaiti, a Tunisian-born mason who has spent three decades in Paris, said the attack that officials say left one police officer dead and another wounded didn't panic him.
But the 55-year-old says visitors to the French "were running, running...Some were crying. There were tens, maybe even hundreds of them.''
Asked whether the attack was evidence that "Paris isn't Paris'' anymore, as claimed by Donald Trump, Ftaiti said the U.S. President is "barking up the wrong tree.''
He says: "Paris is Paris. It's America that's not America.''
French President Francois Hollande has scheduled an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve following the shootings.
The shooting happened as the country is under a state of emergency from a series of extremist attacks.
The attack also came three days before the first round of balloting in France's presidential election.