[ad_1]
An attacker with a knife killed three people in an alleged terrorist incident at a church in the French city of Nice, police and authorities said.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, who described the attack as terrorism, said on Twitter that it had occurred in or near the city’s Notre Dame church.
Estrosi said that the attacker had repeatedly yelled the phrase “Allahu Akbar”, or God is the greatest, even after being detained by the police.
One of the people killed inside the church is believed to have been the church director, Estrosi said, adding that a woman had tried to escape from inside the church and had fled to a bar in front of the building.
He said the suspect was shot and wounded by police.
Reuters reporters at the scene said police armed with automatic weapons had placed a security cordon around the church, which is on Nice’s Jean Medecin Avenue, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare.
French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Nice, Estrosi said.
In Paris, the parliamentarians of the National Assembly observed a minute of silence in solidarity with the victims.
Police said three people were confirmed to have been killed in the attack and several were injured. The French counter-terrorism prosecutor’s department said it had been asked to investigate.
I’m on the site with him @ PoliceNat06 and the @pmdenice who arrested the author of the attack. I confirm that everything suggests a terrorist attack on the Basilica of Notre-Dame de # Nice06. pic.twitter.com/VmpDqRwzB1
– Christian Estrosi (@cestrosi) October 29, 2020
A police source said a woman was beheaded.
Mr. Estrosi said that the victims had been killed in a “horrible way”.
“The methods certainly coincide with those used against Conflans Sainte Honorine’s brave teacher, Samuel Paty,” he said, referring to a French teacher beheaded earlier this month in an attack in a Paris suburb.
A man of Chechen origin said he wanted to punish Mr. Paty for showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a civics lesson.
It was not immediately clear if today’s attack was related to the cartoons, which Muslims consider blasphemy.
Since Paty’s murder, French officials, backed by many ordinary citizens, have reaffirmed the right to display the cartoons, and the images have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with the murdered teacher.
That has sparked a torrent of anger in parts of the Muslim world, with some governments accusing French leader Emmanuel Macron of pursuing an anti-Islam agenda.
In another incident, police shot and killed a man in Montfavet, near the southern French city of Avignon, after he had previously threatened passersby with a gun, police said, confirming reports from the media.
In Saudi Arabia, a Saudi national wounded a guard in a knife attack at the French consulate in Jeddah today, state media and the French embassy said.
“The attacker was detained by the Saudi security forces immediately after the attack. The guard was taken to hospital and his life is not in danger,” the embassy said in a statement.
[ad_2]