An attacker fatally stabbed a female police administrative worker in broad daylight on Friday at the entrance to a police station in a middle-class commuter town outside Paris.

France’s anti-terror prosecutor said he was taking the lead in the investigation and Prime Minister Jean Castex said it was a terrorist attack.

“France has lost one of its everyday heroines in a barbaric gesture of infinite cowardice,” Castex said at the scene of the attack in Rambouillet. The woman was knifed in the throat, two security sources said. The assailant was shot dead by police officers.

The attacker was of Tunisian nationality and residing in France on legitimate papers.