Police secure the crime scene at Gare du Nord station in Paris on Monday. Reuters

The man attacked two police officers on patrol at the station, one of Europe's busiest, with a 30-centimetre (12-inch) knife with the English slogan ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) written on the blade, according to prosecutors.

"The police were threatened by an assailant who had a knife and who clearly wanted to hurt them and kill them," Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters on a visit to the southern city of Montpellier. "They used their service weapons to neutralise him and he died," Darmanin added.

The attack occurred around 7:00am, he wrote earlier on Twitter.

Paris prosecutors said a knife bearing the letters ACAB — a worldwide anti-police slogan believed to have first been used in the UK — had been found in the vicinity of the attack.

"The slogan ACAB is clearly a sign that the person wanted to directly attack the police because they were police," said Darmanin.

A France Television journalist who was at the train station at the time posted a video of the incident on social media, in which two gunshots can be heard.

The station is the hub for Eurostar trains to and from London and Thalys trains that link France with Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as high-speed trains to the French north.

'Risk their lives'

"It was an individual known to the police as someone who wandered around in the station," Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari told RMC TV.

"He appears to have attacked the police with a knife, forcing them to use their weapon."

However a police source, who asked not to be named, later told AFP that the man, born in 1991, was previously unknown to the security forces.

Agence France-Presse