The Latest: Far-left candidate goes on with final event

While other candidates cancelled their last sprint of campaigning Friday in light of Thursday's deadly gun attack on the Champs-Elysees avenue, the firebrand 65-year-old carried on his pre-planned event in Paris so as "not to interrupt the democratic process."

Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni has expressed hope the attack on police in Paris won't impact how French vote Sunday in their presidential election because "that's what the terrorists want."

Prosecutors said Cheurfi, who was killed after shooting dead a French police officer on Thursday night, had carried a note defending the Islamic State group.

Jugele was among the officers who responded to the gun and bomb attack on Paris' Bataclan concert hall in November 2015, part of a wave of assaults in the French capital that killed 130 people, he told People.com when the venue reopened a year later with a concert by Sting.

President Sergio Mattarella says Italy not only takes France's side in the fight against extremist violence, "but, above all, in the full and common adhesion to the inalienable principles of freedom that, in democracy, find full and concrete realization at election time."

Italy's head of state added that "no form of terrorism" can make European nations "shrink from the firm intention of recognizing, safeguarding and promoting the founding values of our democratic societies."

Macron, an independent centrist considered as one of the front-runners, recalled a series of security measures listed in his campaign platform: boost police and military forces and intelligence services, and pursue France's military operations against the Islamic state group in Iraq and Syria.

The Champs-Elysees attack is deepening France's political divide, with the Socialist prime minister tearing into far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, accusing the National Front leader of seeking to make political hay from the assault.

After Le Pen spoke scathingly earlier Friday of the government's fight against extremism, Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve noted that Le Pen's party in 2014 voted against an anti-terrorism law and, in 2015, against a law that beefed up resources for French intelligence services.

The swift claim indicated the group may have been trying to capitalize on the widespread attention from a high-profile attack at a time when Islamic extremism and security are at the center of France's presidential campaign.

French conservative candidate Francois Fillon has pledged to keep the country under a state of emergency following the shooting of police officers Thursday in Paris.

Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen called on the government to restore France's borders immediately following the shooting of Paris officers in Paris.

In a statement from her campaign headquarter in Paris, she asked the government and judicial authorities to handle the case of all individuals on the French territory known for "their adhesion to the enemy's ideology".

Two French officials say the gunman who shot and killed a police officer on the Champs-Elysees was detained in February for threatening police then freed.

Far-left presidential candidate Philippe Poutou is blaming French politics for the deadly attack on Paris' Champs-Elysees, in which a police officer and the attacker were killed.

Poutou says the French state has to share the blame for attacks because it discriminates against people living in impoverished suburbs because of "their skin color or origins," takes military action in Africa and the Middle East and sells arms to dictatorships.

The Paris prosecutors' office leading the investigation into the Champs-Elysees gun attack says police have detained for questioning three family members of the suspected gunman, who was shot and killed.

The Islamic State group quickly claimed responsibility for the attack that killed one police officers and injured two others on the iconic Parisian boulevard Thursday night.

Far-right French populist leader Marine Le Pen is calling for "a clear head and a firm grip" in the wake of the Champs-Elysees gun attack that put the focus back on one of the main themes of her election campaign for the French presidency:

Parisian commuters and tourists are walking warily past police tape around the Champs-Elysees after an attack that some say may push voters to favor far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

France's government has reviewed its already extensive election security measures and says it is "fully mobilized" in the wake of the Champs-Elysees gun attack on police officers.

Presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron is appealing to French voters to keep a cool head in the wake of the gun attack of the Champs-Elysees that killed a police officer.

Speaking Friday on RTL radio, Macron said: "What our attackers want is death, symbolism, to sow panic (and) to disturb a democratic process, which is the presidential election."

The centrist who has been a front-runner in polls with Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front said he has canceled two planned campaign stops on Friday out of a sense to "decency" and to allow police to concentrate resources on the attack investigation.

National police spokesman Jerome Bonet, also speaking on BFM television, said "there were thousands of people" on the iconic boulevard in Paris when the gunman opened fire and that the rapid response of officers who shot and killed him avoided a possible "carnage."

France began picking itself up Friday from another shooting claimed by the Islamic State group, with President Francois Hollande calling together the government's security council and his would-be successors in the presidential election campaign treading carefully before voting this weekend.