PARIS — A man with a large knife was shot by a French soldier on Friday after he lunged at soldiers, shouting “God is great” in Arabic near the Louvre Museum in Paris, the police said, immediately raising tensions in a country that has been the site of several terrorist attacks in the past two years.
The Paris police chief, Michel Cadot, said that the assailant had been carrying two backpacks but that there was no indication they had contained explosives.
The Paris prosecutor’s office opened a terrorism investigation, but the authorities are being cautious about the suspect’s motives.
Mr. Cadot said the suspect was shot five times while in the stairway to an entrance of the museum from the underground Carrousel du Louvre shopping center, and that he was seriously wounded. One soldier has a minor injury.
The authorities cordoned off a courtyard of the Louvre, which has long been considered a possible target of extremists, and the museum was under tight security.
According to the French Interior Ministry, there were about 250 visitors in the museum at the time of the attack — in the morning, when the venue is less crowded. It also draws far fewer visitors in the winter, low season for tourists, than in the summer.
Those who were inside the museum were moved to a secure place, the police chief said, and no one else was allowed to enter. The roughly 1,000 people who were inside the blocked-off area were let out around midday.
A second person has been taken into custody, said Pierre-Henry Brandet, an Interior Ministry spokesman, but that person’s connection to the events at the Louvre is unclear.
France has been under a state of emergency for more than a year, since attacks in and around the city in November 2015 left 130 people dead. It has been the site of several deadly assaults since then.
In June, an off-duty police officer and his wife were stabbed to death by a man who then filmed himself claiming allegiance to the Islamic State, broadcasting the video on Facebook.
On July 14, a man driving a truck plowed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the southern city of Nice , killing 86. Just 12 days later, two men burst into a church during morning Mass in the northern town of St.-Étienne-du-Rouvray and slaughtered a priest, Jacques Hamel .
Many of the assailants have said they were inspired by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, but had links to a wider network of terrorists .
Over the summer, most notably during the Euro 2016 soccer championship, France heightened security measures and conducted raids of possible terrorist cells.
Some of the suspects were French citizens , some showed no sign of radicalization , and women have emerged among their ranks.
In November, seven men who the authorities said were planning terrorist attacks were arrested in the eastern city of Strasbourg and the southern port city of Marseille.
With presidential elections scheduled in a few months, and more than two years after the attacks on the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo , questions of how to deal with terrorism and security remain a source of tension in France.
