PARIS (REUTERS) - The man who carried out a fatal knife attack in the south-eastern French town of Romans-sur-Isère was likely to have acted alone, the French anti-terrorist prosecutor's department said on Wednesday (April 8).

"The initial investigations lead us to believe that he was acting alone, without having been given any orders by a terrorist organisation," it said in a statement.

The suspect, a 33-year-old of Sudanese origin, was arrested after killing two people and wounding five during the attack on April 4.

The prosecutor's department added that the suspect, who had a job in a local business, was not known to police forces or to intelligence services. He had arrived in France in August 2016 and obtained refugee status in June 2017.

At the time of his arrest last Saturday, police had found him kneeling on a sidewalk and praying in Arabic.

A search of his home revealed documents with a religious connotation in which the author complained in particular of living in a country of "unbelievers".

France has seen a wave of deadly attacks carried out by Islamist militants in recent years. Coordinated bombings and shootings in November 2015 at the Bataclan theater and other sites around Paris killed 130 people - the deadliest attacks in France since World War Two.