Man shot and arrested on motorway after Paris soldier attack

French police have shot and arrested a man suspected of deliberately ramming his car into a group of soldiers in a Parisian suburb, injuring six of them in what the government called a deliberate attack.

Armed police from elite units tracked the fugitive for five hours after the attack before cornering him on a motorway in northern France and shooting him several times.

The suspect was unarmed when he was trapped by police some 162 miles (260km) north of Paris where he had attacked the soldiers in the affluent suburb of Levallois-Perret, a judicial source said.

His condition is unknown.

The man appeared to have lain in wait for the soldiers in a pedestrian zone near their base in Levallois-Perret on the northwestern edge of the capital where France's domestic counter-terrorism agency is based.

He accelerated his BMW car into the troops, who were starting their patrol, when they were a few metres away, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said, before speeding off and sparking a huge manhunt.

"This was a deliberate act, not an accident," Collomb told reporters outside the hospital where the three more seriously injured victims were being treated.

He said a terrorism investigation had been launched.

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The soldiers were part of Operation Sentinel, launched in the wake of Islamist attacks in Paris in early 2015. The Levallois-Perret attack was the 15th on troops and police in the last two-and-a-half years, many of them Islamic State-inspired.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told lawmakers in parliament that the "main suspect" had been detained. One policeman was injured by a stray bullet in the operation.

A judicial source said the suspect was an Algerian national who held legitimate papers to be in France.

Investigators raided several properties associated with the suspect, identified by the daily newspaper Le Parisien as 37-year-old Hamou B.

Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said Wednesday's attack was proof there remained an active threat and that the 7,000-strong Sentinel force "was more necessary than ever".

Three soldiers had light injuries, Parly said, while three others were more gravely hurt but not as seriously as previously thought.