PARIS: The French National Gendarme service says three people have apparently been killed and two police officers wounded, including a child on Tuesday in a shootout at a gypsy camp in northern France.

Among the victims were a man, a woman and a young child, while two police officers and a child were wounded.

A spokesman said the regional gendarme service was alerted Tuesday afternoon to shots fired at a camp of "travelling people", as French Gypsies or Roma are known, in the town of Roye.

The spokesman, who was not authorised to be publicly named, said that the gunman shot at the officers when they arrived at the camp, leaving one critically injured and the other slightly wounded.

The police spokesman said the attacker was also injured in the melee and arrested. Three bodies and a wounded person were found among members of the camp.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the violence in the northern town of Roye, about 110 kilometres north of Paris.

The shooting took place only four days after a heavily armed man opened fire on a high-speed train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris, injuring at least two people before being overpowered by passengers.

Read more: Gunman opens fire on train in France

The motives of the attacker in the train shooting incident were also not immediately known. According to a spokesman of the interior minister, it was "too early" to link the suspect with terrorist organisations.