A French police officer has been stabbed to death inside her police station and her attacker shot and killed nearby, authorities have said.

A police source said the woman was stabbed in the throat during the attack just inside the station in Rambouillet, a town southwest of Paris home to a former royal estate.

The identity of the attacker or the motive behind the assault is not immediately clear, a national police spokesperson told Associated Press news agency.

The police officer was an administrative employee in the station, the spokesperson said.

Investigators were looking into whether there might have been a link to terrorism, but the anti-terrorism prosecutor's office said it was not currently involved in the investigation.

The police source said the attacker had Tunisian nationality, was in France legally and had no police record.

They added that he was not shouting Islamist slogans during the stabbing, which is often the mark of an attack by an Islamist terrorist.

France has seen deadly attacks against police in the past.

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin and other top officials were heading to the scene of the attack.