Woman decapitated and two others killed in knife attack in Nice

An attacker with a knife killed three people, including a woman who was beheaded, at a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday, police said.

The city mayor described the incident as terrorism.

Mayor Christian Estrosi said on Twitter that the knife attack had occurred in or near the city’s Notre Dame church and that police had detained the attacker.

Police said two people were confirmed to have been killed in the attack and several were injured.

A police source said a woman was beheaded. French politician Marine Le Pen also spoke of a beheading in the attack.

The attack comes as France is still reeling from the beheading earlier this month of French high school teacher Samuel Paty by a man of Chechen origin.

The attacker had said that he wanted to punish Paty for showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a civics lesson.

It was not immediately clear what the motive for the Nice attack was, or if there was any connection 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.