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A man wielding a knife killed three people at a church in the French city of Nice in what officials are treating as a terrorist attack.
The attacker was shot and wounded by police, Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi said.
“He kept repeating ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greater) even when he was under medication” when he was taken to hospital, Estrosi told reporters, a claim later confirmed by police sources.
Police found the body of a woman inside the Notre-Dame Basilica, in the heart of the Mediterranean resort town, a source close to the investigation said.
The body of a man was also found inside, while a third person succumbed to injuries after seeking refuge in a nearby bar.
Father Philippe Asso, who serves in the Notre-Dame basilica, said there was no mass at the time of the attack, but that the church opens around 8 a.m. local time.
He said one victim was a church employee.
Within hours of the Nice attack, the police killed a man who had threatened passersby with a pistol in Montfavet, near the southern city of Avignon.
In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, state television reported that a Saudi man had been arrested in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after attacking and wounding a guard at the French consulate there.
The French embassy said he was in hospital after a knife attack, although his life was not in danger.
The attack in Nice comes just days after thousands of people demonstrated across France in solidarity with a teacher who was beheaded for showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The latest attack, just days before the Catholic holy day of All Saints, prompted Prime Minister Jean Castex to raise the level of terror alert to the highest throughout the country.
French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Nice after the attack, where he met with emergency services and was briefed on the incident.
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A witness, who works at the nearby Grand Café de Lyon, a block from the church, said it was just before 9 a.m. local time when “shots were fired and everyone ran away.”
“A woman came straight from the church and said: ‘Run, run, someone has been stabbing people,'” he told AFP, and dozens of police and rescue vehicles quickly closed the neighborhood.
French counterterrorism prosecutors have opened an investigation into what Estrosi called an “Islamofascist attack.”
France has been on high alert since the January 2015 massacre in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which marked the beginning of a wave of jihadist attacks that have killed more than 250 people.
But tensions have escalated since last month, when the trial was opened for 14 suspected accomplices in that attack.
The newspaper marked the beginning of the legal proceedings by republishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that angered millions of Muslims around the world.
A few days later, an 18-year-old man from Pakistan seriously injured two people with a butcher knife in front of Charlie Hebdo’s former offices in Paris.
In Nice, painful memories of a jihadist attack remain fresh during the Bastille Day fireworks on July 14, 2016, when a man rammed his truck into a crowded promenade, killing 86 people.
A few days later, two teenagers murdered an 85-year-old priest while he was conducting a mass at his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, in northern France, an attack later claimed by the Islamic State group.
Today’s attack prompted condemnation from France’s allies, with German Angela Merkel saying she was “deeply moved” and EU Parliament Speaker David Sassoli saying: “This pain is felt by all of Europe.
“We have a duty to unite against violence and those who seek to incite and spread hatred,” he said on Twitter.
Abdallah Zekri, director general of the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM), said: “I can only denounce as strongly as possible this act of cowardice against the innocent.”
Zekri called on French Muslims to cancel the festivities to mark Mawlid, or the Prophet’s birthday, which ends today, “in solidarity with the victims and their loved ones.”
Meanwhile, Estrosi called for churches across the country to be given additional security or closed as a precaution.
The attack comes with heightened tensions following the murder of history teacher Samuel Paty by 18-year-old Chechen Abdullakh Anzorov, who committed the gruesome crime outside Paty’s school in a Paris suburb on October 16 after the teacher was denounced by angry parents on social media. .
His assassination prompted Macron to promise an offensive against Islamic extremism, including closing mosques and organizations accused of fomenting radicalism and violence.
But the move has raised tensions with many Muslims who say Macron is unfairly targeting the five to six million Muslims in France, Europe’s largest community.
Protests against France have broken out in several Muslim countries, some urging a boycott of French products, and tensions have flared in particular between Macron and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said it strongly condemned the attack in Nice, offering “solidarity with the French people.”
Pope Francis condemned the attack as “savage” and the Vatican said terrorism and violence were never acceptable.
“Informed of the savage attack that was perpetrated this morning in a church in Nice, causing the death of several innocent people, His Holiness Pope Francis unites in prayer to the suffering of the families and shares their pain,” says a message sent in his name the bishop of Nice.
He said the Pope condemned “in the strongest possible terms such violent acts of terror” and urged the French people to unite.
Earlier, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the attack “sowed death in a place of love and comfort,” a house of God.
“It is a moment of pain in a moment of confusion. Terrorism and violence can never be accepted,” he said.
Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has said that Ireland supports France and the French people “in the face of violence and terrorism.”
Once again we are with #France and the French against violence and terrorism.
We offer our condolences and our solidarity with France after another terrorist attack. All the French are in our thoughts and prayers today. pic.twitter.com/cRiUD4vATZ– Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) October 29, 2020
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, condemned the attack, calling it a “heinous and brutal attack”.
He said that all of Europe sympathized with France and remained united and determined “in the face of barbarism and fanaticism.”
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