NICE, France, Oct 30, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – A knife-wielding man killed three
people at a church in southern France Thursday, practically beheading a 60-
year-old woman in what President Emmanuel Macron called an “Islamist
terrorist attack.”
The 21-year-old Tunisian migrant, who had a copy of the Koran and three
knives with him, shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) when approached by
police who shot and seriously wounded him, France’s anti-terror prosecutor
Jean-Francois Ricard told a press conference.
In a near half-hour frenzy in the Notre-Dame basilica in the centre of
Nice, the assailant used a knife of 30 centimetres (12 inches) to cut the
throat of a 60-year-old woman so deep that he practically beheaded her, said
Ricard. She died inside the church.
The body of a man, a 55-year-old church employee, was found nearby inside
the basilica, his throat also slit.
Another woman, a 44-year-old who had fled the church to a nearby
restaurant, died shortly afterwards from multiple knife wounds.
The victims were “people targeted for the sole reason that they were
present in this church at that moment,” said Ricard.
The attack, he added, was a reminder that “the deadly ideology of Islamist
terrorism is very much alive”.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi told journalists at the scene the attacker
“kept repeating ‘Allahu Akbar’ even while under medication” as he was taken
to hospital.
– Police prevented ‘higher toll’ –
Ricard said the attacker was a Tunisian, born in 1999, who had arrived in
Italy on September 20, and then in France on October 9.
In a bag he had left at the scene, investigators found two unused knives,
and the prosecutor said police who shot him had “without any doubt prevented
an even higher toll.”
The killings, which occurred ahead of the Catholic holy day of All Saints
Day on Sunday, prompted the government to raise the terror alert level to the
maximum “emergency” level nationwide.
Churches across France sounded death knells, the traditional bell toll to
mark a death, at 3:00 pm.
– School security boosted –
Macron, who quickly travelled to Nice, announced increased surveillance of
churches by France’s Sentinelle military patrols, to be bolstered to 7,000
troops from 3,000.
Security at schools would also be boosted, he said.
“Quite clearly, it is France that is being attacked,” the president added,
vowing the country “will not give up on our values”.
France has been the target of widespread anger in the Islamic world after
Macron vowed to take the fight to radicals after the October 16 beheading of
a history teacher by an extremist for having shown pupils cartoons of the
Prophet Mohammed in a free speech lesson.
But some claim Macron is unfairly targeting France’s estimated five to six
million Muslims — the largest community in Europe.
Several Muslim-majority countries have launched campaigns to boycott
French products, while protesters burnt the French flag and posters of Macron
as demonstrations were held in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the
Palestinian territories.
Macron on Thursday urged people of all religions to unite and not “give in
to the spirit of division”.
– France on edge –
Daniel Conilh, a 32-year-old waiter at Nice’s Grand Cafe de Lyon, a block
from the church, said it was shortly before 9:00 am when “shots were fired
and everybody took off running.”
“A woman came in straight from the church and said, ‘Run, run, someone has
been stabbing people’,” he told AFP.
French anti-terror prosecutors are handling the inquiry into charges
related to a “terrorist murder”.
France has been on high alert since the January 2015 massacre at the
satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo marked the beginning of a wave of
jihadist attacks that have killed more than 250 people.
Tensions have heightened since last month, when the trial opened for 14
suspected accomplices in that attack.
The paper marked the start of the court proceedings by republishing
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that infuriated millions of Muslims
worldwide — the same caricatures that teacher Samuel Paty used as lesson
material.
Days after the trial opened, an 18-year-old man from Pakistan seriously
injured two people with a meat cleaver outside Charlie Hebdo’s former offices
in Paris.
In Nice, painful memories remain fresh of a jihadist attack during
Bastille Day celebrations on July 14, 2016, when a man rammed his truck into
a crowded promenade, killing 86 people.
Abdallah Zekri, director general of the French Council of Muslim Worship
(CFCM) denounced Thursday’s attack and urged French Muslims to cancel
festivities to mark the Mawlid, or the Prophet’s birthday, which ends
Thursday, “in solidarity with the victims and their loved ones.”