The 40-year-old attacker was already known to the justice system for a murder committed in 2018, for which he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, police sources told AFP. The attack comes less than two weeks before the opening of the Paris Olympics, which run from 26 July to 11 August.

The man, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has French nationality, one of the sources said. According to initial reports, "he claims to be a Christian and reportedly shouted 'God is great' in French" during the attack, another police source said, adding that he said he acted "because the military is killing people in his country".

In 2018, he fatally stabbed a 22-year-old man at the Chatelet-les-Halles metro station in central Paris. He was declared not legally responsible for the murder due to diminished responsibility and was never tried, according to a court judgment verified by AFP.

"My thoughts go out to the soldier wounded this evening at Gare de l'Est, who was deployed as part of Operation Sentinelle," the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, also wrote on X. "France is on high alert."

The French government raised its terror alert to the highest level on March. The soldier was acting as part of 'Sentinelle', a special military operation to protect sensitive sites in Paris, deployed after the 2015 Islamist attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Operation Sentinelle was launched in January 2015. It consists of the deployment of military patrols to numerous sensitive sites on French territory to increase security as part of the fight against terrorism.

Soldiers in the Sentinelle force have been targeted in the past. In February 2017, an Egyptian attacked soldiers with a machete outside the world-famous Louvre museum in central Paris, shouting "Allah akbar" - which means "God is great" in Arabic.

3,000 people patrol sites such as train stations, places of worship, schools and theatres. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal put an additional 3,000 troops on standby for the "sentinel".

The French capital is preparing for one of the biggest security challenges in its history: 600,000 people are expected to attend the unprecedented Opening Ceremony on the Seine and an average of 40,000 security personnel will be on duty every day.

Paris will deploy around 30,000 police officers a day for the Games, which run from 26 July to 11 August, with a peak of 45,000 for the opening ceremony on the Seine. Some 18,000 members of the army are also helping with security.

French police have already intercepted the first publicly documented terrorist threat related to the games. In late April, French anti-terrorism forces arrested a 16-year-old from Marignier who had posted on social media about his intention to build an explosive belt and carry out a suicide bombing at an Olympic venue.

On 22 May, they apprehended an 18-year-old Chechen accused of plotting to bomb spectators and police at a football stadium in Saint-Etienne. It was the fiftieth attack foiled by intelligence services since 2017, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told the media. They later arrested a man after he was alledgedly suspected of endagering the Olympic Relay.