PARIS — French authorities said Monday that a teacher who claimed to have been stabbed with scissors and a box cutter at a preschool near Paris had fabricated the story.
A police official in Aubervilliers confirmed that the man, who has not been identified, admitted to having invented the assault by a supporter of the Islamic State at the Jean Perrin preschool in Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris.
It "was a fake attempt, done so that he could have himself transferred" to another job, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
A spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor's office, Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, said "he wounded himself alone in his classroom, before the children arrived," in what she called the first such instance in France. She said the preschool teacher, 45, was in the hospital for his wounds, which were not life-threatening, and was being questioned further.
Earlier in the day, she said the teacher described the attacker as saying, "This is Daesh, this is a warning." Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL.
The teacher had said that no children or other members of staff had been present at the time.
Authorities took the teacher's claim seriously, beginning a search for the assailant as the Paris prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation for attempted murder.
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the French education minister, said authorities closed the preschool in response to the reported attack, but that it would reopen Tuesday.