PARIS — A knife-wielding man shouting “Allahu akbar” attacked French soldiers on patrol near the Louvre Museum Friday in what officials described as a suspected terror attack. The soldiers first tried to fight off the attacker and then opened fire, shooting him five times.

The attack at an entrance to a shopping mall that extends beneath the museum sowed panic and again highlighted the threat French officials say hangs over the country, which was hit repeatedly by extremist attacks in 2015 and 2016.

A police union official said the attacker was carrying two backpacks and had two machetes. He said the man launched himself at the soldiers when they told him that he could not bring his bags into the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall underneath the world-famous museum where the “Mona Lisa” hangs.

“That’s when he got the knife out and that’s when he tried to stab the soldier,” said the official, Yves Lefebvre.

The four soldiers first tried to fight off the attacker before opening fire, said Benoit Brulon, a spokesman for the military force that patrols Paris and its major tourist attractions.

The French interior ministry said anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating. There were no immediate details about the identity of the attacker. “Allahu akbar” is the Arabic phrase for “God is great.”

The patrols — numbering about 3,500 soldiers in the Paris area — were instituted following the January 2015 attacks on Paris’ satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and reinforced after Nov. 13 suicide bomb and gun attacks that left 130 people dead at the city’s Bataclan concert hall and other sites.

The attacker slightly injured one of the soldiers, in the scalp, officials said. Another soldier opened fire, gravely wounding the attacker.

“He is wounded in the stomach,” said police chief Michel Cadot. “He is conscious and he was moving.”

Checks of the man’s two backpacks found they didn’t contain any explosives, he said.

Cadot said a second person who was “acting suspiciously” also was arrested but appears not to have been linked to the attack.

Restaurant worker Sanae Hadraoui, 32, was waiting for breakfast at the Louvre’s restaurant complex when she heard the first gunshot, followed by another and then a couple more.

“I hear a shot. Then a second shot. Then maybe two more. I hear people screaming, “Evacuate! Evacuate!”

“They told us to evacuate. I told my colleagues at the McDonalds. We went downstairs and then took the emergency exit.”

Hadraoui, who has worked at the Louvre for seven years, said the evacuation was orderly. She was smoking a cigarette when her managers told her people were going back inside.

The museum in the center of Paris is one of the French capital’s biggest tourist attractions. Police sealed off entrances around where the attack took place and closed the area to vehicles, snarling traffic in a busy part of central Paris. Officers shooed away confused tourists.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said about 1,000 people were inside the actual museum and were held inside in safe areas before the all-clear was given and they were allowed to move around as normal again.

Exterminator Olivier Majewski says he was just leaving his scooter in the parking lot beneath the Louvre when he saw a crush of people running and screaming “there’s been a terror attack.” The 53-year-old says he hid for about 15 minutes before gingerly making his way upstairs.

“They were panicked,” he said.

Story: John Leicester, Raphael Satter and Angela Charlton

PARIS — Conservative candidate Francois Fillon, once the front-runner in France’s presidential race, is facing a political maelstrom after first his wife, then his children became targets in an embezzlement probe into paid – but allegedly fake – political jobs.

The decision Thursday by the national prosecutor’s office to expand its investigation into Penelope Fillon’s work as a parliamentary aide to her husband to include a son and a daughter added a whole new layer of worry for both Fillon and his party, which is watching its chances of regaining power dwindle.

French national financial prosecutors have been investigating Penelope Fillon’s work, seeking to determine whether there are grounds to suspect embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds. The Canard Enchaine weekly reported Wednesday that she made 830,000 euros (USD $900,000) over 15 years.

A person close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Thursday that prosecutors have extended the probe to also cover the couple’s daughter, Marie, and son, Charles. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, because they were barred from discussing the investigation publicly.

Allegations that Fillon’s family used his political connections for personal enrichment have been particularly damaging for the former prime minister’s image as an upstanding Catholic family man and country gentleman untainted by the long history of sleaze in French politics. The contrast stings because Fillon has promised to slash public sector jobs and make the French work harder and longer.

The hit to Fillon’s prospects of winning France’s two-round presidential election in April and May has thrown wide open the race that had been expected to be between him and far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen. With Fillon weakened and the unpopular Socialist President Francois Hollande having abandoned hopes of running for a second five-year term, Le Pen and independent maverick Emmanuel Macron are making hay ahead of the April 23 first-round vote.

A possible runoff vote between Le Pen and Macros on May 7 would augur a total upset of France’s political landscape, for it would not include the traditional right, represented by Fillon, nor the Socialist left, which fell into disarray under Hollande.

An angry Fillon addressed a rally Thursday night in Charleville-Mezieres, in northeast France, calling the allegations attacks on him and the right.

“I’m not a dupe. It’s not justice that they’re after – it’s to break me,” he said, insisting “there is nothing illegal.”

His eyes appeared teary as he called on the crowd to support him.

“My friends, I ask you to help me resist,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Fillon was heckled by a young man who yelled “Fillon, thief! Resign!” during a stop at a daycare center.

The Canard Enchaine reported that Fillon hired his children as parliamentary aides when he was a French senator from 2005-2007, and they earned 84,000 euros (USD $91,000) in total.

Fillon has confirmed he paid two of his children, “who were lawyers,” for “specific assignments” when he was a senator. However, Marie and Charles still were in law school when they worked for their father, French media say. According to Le Canard Enchaine, they drew paychecks not for assignments but for two full-time jobs.

Marie and Charles Fillon did not respond to emails or telephone messages from the AP.

French politicians are allowed to hire family members as aides as long as they actually do the jobs for which they are paid. Fillon also insists that Penelope’s work for him was genuine.

But France Television’s “Special Envoy” show on Thursday night dug up an interview of Penelope Fillon in 2007, just after her husband became prime minister, in which said she had accompanied him during his electoral campaign, slipped political leaflets under doors – but added “I’ve never been actually his assistant … I don’t deal with his communications.”

That appears to contradict the couple’s defense that she was legitimately employed.

Her lawyer, Pierre Cornut-Gentille, said Penelope’s words were being taken out of context. He insisted she was a woman of great discretion, always concerned “not to appear as if she exercised a public political role.”

Fillon and his wife were separately questioned by investigators for five hours Monday and her lawyer said Penelope Fillon gave investigators evidence that her work for her husband was genuine.

Senior conservatives rallied Thursday around Fillon, denouncing an “attempt to kill” his candidacy.

“They’re throwing to the wolves a man, his wife, his children, his colleagues, without waiting for their arguments or listening to their defense,” 17 conservatives, including former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said in a tribune in the Le Figaro newspaper.

Story: John Leicester, Elaine Ganley

WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled Congress on Thursday scrapped Obama-era rules on the environment and guns, counting on a new ally in the White House to help reverse years of what the GOP calls excessive regulation.

The Senate gave final approval to a measure eliminating a rule to prevent coal mining debris from being dumped into nearby streams, while the House backed a separate resolution doing away with extended background checks for gun purchases by some Social Security recipients with mental disabilities.

The Senate’s 54-45 vote sends the repeal of the stream protection rule to President Donald Trump. The gun measure awaits Senate action.

The White House said Thursday night that Trump supports both measures and is likely to sign them.

Republicans and some Democrats say the coal-mining rule could eliminate thousands of coal-related jobs and ignores dozens of federal, state and local regulations already in place.

The Interior Department, which announced the rule in December, said that it would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests, preventing coal mining debris from being dumped into nearby waters.

The vote was the first in a series of actions Republicans are expected to take in coming weeks to reverse years of what they call excessive regulation during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Rules on fracking, federal contracting and other issues also are in the cross-hairs as the GOP moves to void a host of regulations finalized during Obama’s last months in office.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the stream rule “an attack against coal miners and their families” and said it would have threatened coal jobs and caused major damage to communities in Kentucky and other coal-producing states.

“The legislation we passed today will help stop this disastrous rule and bring relief to coal miners and their families,” McConnell said.

Democrats called the vote an attack on clean water and a clear win for big coal-mining companies and other polluters.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said the stream rule had nothing to do with the decline of coal, which faces stiff competition from cheap natural gas.

“This rule was not in place” when coal production began declining in the past half-dozen years, Cantwell said.

In the House, the issue was an Obama rule extending background checks for disabled Social Security recipients mentally incapable of managing their own affairs. The House voted 235-180 to scuttle it.

Under the rule, the Social Security Administration had to provide information to the gun-buying background check system on recipients with a mental disorder so severe they cannot work and need someone to handle their benefits. The rule, also finalized in December, would have affected an estimated 75,000 beneficiaries.

“There is no evidence suggesting that those receiving disability benefits from the Social Security Administration are a threat to public safety,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

“Once an unelected bureaucrat unfairly adds these folks to the federal background check system, they are no longer able to exercise their Second Amendment right,” he said.

After the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama directed the Justice Department to provide guidance to agencies regarding information they are obligated to report to the background check system.

In Newtown, 20 children and six educators were shot to death when a gunman entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. The gunman had earlier killed his mother inside their home, and he used a gun and ammunition that she had purchased. His mental health problems have been extensively reported since the shooting.

Democrats said Republicans were doing the bidding of the National Rifle Association, which opposed the Social Security Administration’s rule.

“These are not people just having a bad day,” Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., said. “These are not people simply suffering from depression or anxiety or agoraphobia. These are people with a severe mental illness who can’t hold any kind of job or make any decisions about their affairs, so the law says very clearly they shouldn’t have a firearm.”

The NRA said overturning the regulation will protect a broad class of vulnerable citizens from government overreach. And the American Civil Liberties Union agreed, telling lawmakers that a disability should not constitute grounds for the automatic denial of any right or privilege, including gun ownership.

Republicans are employing a rarely used tool to roll back some of the rules issued in the final months of Obama’s tenure. The Congressional Review Act provides a temporary window for a simple majority of both chambers to invalidate a rule. The president has to sign the disapproval measure for the regulation to be deemed invalid.

The law also prevents the executive branch from imposing substantially similar regulations in the future.

On the coal mining vote, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the sole Republican to oppose the repeal measure, which was supported by four Democrats: Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. All four face re-election next year in states Trump won.

Story: Kevin Freking, Matthew Daly