A history teacher who opened a discussion with students on caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed has been decapitated in a street near Paris, a police official said.

Officers shot the suspected killer dead, the official continued.

The French anti-terrorism prosecutor has opened an investigation into Friday’s incident outside the capital.

The incident occurred in the town of Eragny, in the Val d’Oise region north west of Paris.

A police official said the suspect, armed with a knife and an airsoft gun was shot about 600 metres from where the male teacher was killed.

The teacher had been threatened after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures, the police official told The Associated Press.

It was the second terrorism-related incident since the opening of an ongoing trial on the newsroom massacre in January 2015 at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The paper recently republished caricatures of the prophet. A young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing, outside the newspaper’s former offices, two people who suffered non life-threatening injuries.