NICE, France (Reuters) – A knife-wielding attacker shouting « Allahu Akbar » (God is the greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in the French town of Nice Thursday
Provocative President Emmanuel Macron, saying France has been the subject of an Islamist terrorist attack, said he would deploy thousands more troops to protect important French sites, such as places of worship and schools
Speaking from the stage, he said that France had been attacked « for our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief »
« And I repeat it very clearly today: we will not give any reason »
A police source told Reuters the assailant was suspected by law enforcement to be a 21-year-old Tunisian national who had recently entered France from neighboring Italy His identity was still being verified
In Saudi Arabia, state television reported that a Saudi was arrested in the city of Jeddah on the Red Sea after attacking and injuring a guard at the French consulate The French embassy said he was in hospital after a knife attack when his life was not in danger
Hours after the Nice attack, French police killed a man who threatened passers-by with a handgun in Montfavet, near the southern city of Avignon
French newspaper Le Figaro cited a prosecution source who allegedly said the man was undergoing psychiatric treatment and that they did not believe there was a terrorist motive
The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, said the attack in his town occurred at Notre-Dame church and was similar to the beheading earlier this month near Paris of Professor Samuel Paty , who had used cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a civics class
The attacks on Thursday, the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, came at a time when anger among Muslims escalated over France’s defense of the right to publish the cartoons, and protesters denounced France during street gatherings in several Muslim-majority countries
After the Nice attack, Prime Minister Jean Castex raised France’s security alert to its highest level
At around 9 a.m. (8 a.m. GMT), a man armed with a knife entered the church and slit the sacristan’s throat, beheaded an elderly woman and seriously injured a third woman, according to a police source
The sacristan and the elderly woman died on the spot, the third woman managed to get out of the church to a nearby cafe, where she died, Estrosi told reporters None of the victims have so far been named
« The alleged knife attacker was shot dead by police while in detention He’s on his way to hospital, he’s alive, » he said
« Enough is enough Now is the time for France to exempt itself from the laws of peace in order to permanently eradicate Islamo-fascism from our territory »
Reuters journalists at the scene said police officers armed with automatic weapons had installed a security cordon around the church, which is on Avenue Jean Médecin in Nice, the main shopping street in the city of the Côte d’Azur Ambulances and fire service vehicles were also on the scene
Condemnations for the attack came from Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which President Tayyip Erdogan criticized earlier this week Macron and France for the demonstrations of the prophet Muhammad
Turkish Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun said Islam cannot be used in the name of terrorism, adding: “We call on the French leadership to avoid any further inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims and to stand rather focus on finding the perpetrators of this violence «
In Paris, the legislators of the National Assembly observed a minute of silence The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, declared that the Niçois « can count on the support of the city of Paris and of the Parisians »
A representative of the French Council for the Muslim Faith also condemned the attack “As a sign of mourning and solidarity with the victims and their relatives, I call on all Muslims in France to cancel all celebrations of the feast of Mawlid « The holiday is the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, celebrated on Thursday
The Foreign Ministry of Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam, said that « extremist acts » like the one in Nice « violate all religions, while stressing » the importance of avoiding all practices that generate hatred, violence and extremism ”
France is still reeling from the murder by a Chechen man of teacher Paty in a Paris suburb earlier this month The attacker said he wanted to punish Paty for showing his students prophet muhammad cartoons
France, with Europe’s largest Muslim community, has suffered a series of attacks from militant Islamists in recent years, including bombings and shootings in 2015 in Paris that killed 130 people and a 2016 attack in Nice in which an activist drove a truck into a seaside crowd celebrating July 14, killing 86 people
Report by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Maher Chmaytelli, Raya Jalabi and Mahmoud Mourad; Writing by Christian Lowe and Giles Elgood; Edited by Mark Heinrich
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France, Terrorism, Attack
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