French police sources said that their men were shot dead by a man, after he threatened them with a knife, in the La Defense business district in Paris yesterday.
A security man had warned the police of the presence of a man holding a knife in La Defense square.
The sources added that the suspect rushed towards a patrol consisting of three individuals, who went to find out the situation, while he was defaming the knife and shouting, "I will kill you."
Seven bullets were fired, two of them lodged in the man's chest and thigh.
A police source said that the man, a 42-year-old Moroccan, escaped from a psychiatric hospital last June, and no other details were available so far.
In October, an IT specialist killed four of his colleagues at a police headquarters in Paris, before a police officer shot him dead, in an attack investigating the prosecution for anti-terrorism cases in France.