A knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday.
Following this, President Emmanuel Macron said that France had been subject to an Islamist terrorist attack and he would deploy thousands more soldiers to protect important French sites, such as places of worship and schools. Speaking from the scene, he said France had been attacked “over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief”.
The assailant, a police source told new agency Reuters, was believed to be a 21-year-old Tunisian national who had recently entered France from neighbouring Italy. His identity was still being checked.
Within hours of the Nice attack, French police killed a man who had threatened passersby with a handgun in Montfavet, near the southern city of Avignon. France’s Le Figaro newspaper quoted a prosecution source as saying the man was undergoing psychiatric treatment, and that they did not believe there was a terrorism motive.
Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, said the attack in his city had happened at Notre Dame church and was similar to the beheading earlier this month near Paris of teacher Samuel Paty, who had used cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a civics class. Estrosi said the Nice attacker had repeatedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” even after being detained by police.
Thursday’s attacks, on the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad, came at a time of growing Muslim anger at France’s defence of the right to publish the cartoons, and protesters have denounced France in street rallies in several Muslim-majority countries.
At around 9 am, a man armed with a knife entered the church and slit the throat of the sexton, beheaded an elderly woman, and badly wounded a third woman, a police source told Reuters.
The sexton and the elderly woman died on the spot, the third woman managed to make it out of the church into a nearby cafe, where she died, Estrosi told reporters. None of the victims has so far been named.
“The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained. He is on his way to hospital, he is alive,” he said.
Condemnations of the attack came from across the world. Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the knife attack. In a Tweet, PM Modi expressed condolences for the victims and their families, and reiterated that India stands with France in the fight against terrorism. “I strongly condemn the recent terrorist attacks in France, including today’s heinous attack in Nice inside a church. Our deepest and heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and the people of France. India stands with France in the fight against terrorism,” tweeted Modi.
France is still reeling from the killing by a man of Chechen origin of schoolteacher Paty in a Paris suburb earlier this month. The assailant said he wanted to punish Paty for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad to his pupils.
France, with Europe’s largest Muslim community, has suffered a string of Islamist militant attacks in recent years, including bombings and shootings in 2015 in Paris that killed 130 people and a 2016 attack in Nice in which a militant drove a truck through a seafront crowd celebrating Bastille Day, killing 86.
WITH AGENCY INPUTS
