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The French police announced this Friday morning the arrest of a man suspected of being linked to the attack that took place yesterday Thursday in the vicinity of a church in Nice, which left 3 dead and several wounded, while the French Interior Minister criticized the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanan said there is a possibility of more attacks on French soil. He added: “We are at war against an enemy external and internal, and against” Islamic ideology. “
But he did not see the need to change the constitution to protect the French from terrorist attacks.
In a related context, the French Interior Minister said: “Recent statements by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan went beyond the limits.”
Erdogan had harshly criticized the French president’s defense of insulting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, and his depiction of Islam as a religion in which there is a crisis everywhere.
Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron ordered the deployment of thousands of soldiers to protect places of worship. Speaking from the scene of the incident, he said that France had been attacked by an “Islamic terrorist”, a description that he insisted on using in similar cases despite the ire of Islamic circles.
He added that France is being attacked “for our values, for our desire for freedom and for the possibility of enjoying freedom of belief on our soil.”
I repeat it today with great clarity: we will not surrender, announcing the increase in the number of soldiers in Operation Santinel from 3 thousand to 7 thousand soldiers, to protect important sites, including places of worship and schools, especially with the imminent holiday of All the Saints for Catholics on Sunday.
Maximum alert
For his part, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced raising to the highest level the security alert status in France, which is an “emergency response to aggression”, as part of the “Vigibirat” plan to protect French territory.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrozzi said the attack on the Notre Dame church was similar to the beheading of Master Samuel Patty in the Paris suburbs earlier this month, after he showed offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be with him, in his classroom.
Estrozi added: “Enough is enough … Now is the time for France to repudiate the peace laws, in order to permanently eliminate Islamic fascism from our lands.”
Macron visits the site of the attack (Reuters)The circumstances of the attack
The attack took place around 9 a.m. (8:00 GMT), when a man armed with a knife entered the church and stabbed his 55-year-old servant until he was killed, beheading a 60-year-old woman and stabbing another 44 years old, according to the prosecutor. French counter-terrorism general Jean-Francois Ricard at a press conference Thursday night.
Ricard explained that the third victim managed to escape to a nearby cafe and then took his last breath there, adding that the police arrived after that and confronted the attacker, who was still singing “God is great”, shot him and was transferred to the hospital in critical condition.
Ricard said the attacker is a 21-year-old Tunisian, and he arrived in France from the Italian island of Lampedusa, the main destination for migrants from Africa, where he arrived on September 20.
He added that he arrived in Nice by train on Thursday morning, changed his clothes at the train station and then went to church to start his attack.
He pointed out that the police found him in possession of a Koran and that his personal belongings contained two daggers, which he did not use. He added: “He was carrying a document from the Italian Red Cross in the name of a Tunisian citizen, born in 1999, which applies to him and is unknown to the security services.”
Reuters and the French Press Agency cited law enforcement and security sources as saying the attacker’s name was Ibrahim Ouissawi and that he came from Lampedusa, Italy, this month, as local authorities demanded that he quarantine him before being forced into leave Italian territory and be liberated.
On the other hand, the Tunisian judicial spokesman, Mohsen El-Daly, said: “The anti-terrorist judicial pole has opened a forensic investigation into the suspicion of Tunisian participation in the terrorist attack in Nice.”
Right-wing gunman
Within hours of the Nice attack, police killed a man who threatened passersby with a pistol in the Montfavell region of Avignon in southern France.
The Al-Jazeera correspondent reported that this person belongs to the far-right “Defense of Europe” movement. French media said police shot him after threatening a merchant of Maghreb origin.
The Associated Press quoted a police officer as saying the man was killed after he refused to drop his gun. French press reports had initially claimed that the man chanted “God is great.”
The French newspaper Le Figaro quoted an interim source as saying that the man was undergoing psychological treatment and that the prosecution did not believe there was a terrorist motive behind him.
The “Defending Europe” or “Identity Movement” is a European political movement founded at the end of the last century, and aims to defend and protect the European identity from social and demographic changes derived from immigration. It has several branches, the most famous of which is the “Identity Generation” youth movement.
Along with the Nice attack, Saudi TV announced on Thursday morning the arrest of a Saudi in the city of Jeddah after attacking a guard at the French consulate. The French embassy in Saudi Arabia confirmed that the guard was taken to hospital after stabbing him and said his life was not in danger.
These events come amid the wrath of Muslims in France and around the world, after the French president defended the publication of insulting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, God bless him, and his earlier statement that the Islamic religion it is in crisis everywhere.
Broad sentence
Attitudes condemning the Nice attack and expressing solidarity with France have continued, as US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter, “The United States supports our oldest ally in their fight. These extremist Islamic terrorist attacks must stop from immediate. No country, France or others. Wear it long.
The leaders of the countries of the European Union condemned the attack in the strongest terms and considered it an attack on the common values of Europe, and affirmed, in a joint statement, their position and solidarity with the French government and people in the Common and ongoing war against terrorism and violent extremism, as they describe.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel sympathized with France after the “brutal attack” in Nice. Russia described the attack as a “terrible tragedy” and the Kremlin said it was unacceptable to damage religious sentiments and that it was unacceptable to kill people.
Turkey rejects incitement
For its part, the Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and expressed – in a statement – the solidarity of its country with the French people in the face of violence and terrorism.
Meanwhile, Fakhruddin Altun, head of the communications office of the Turkish presidency, said that Islam cannot be exploited in the name of terrorism.
In Egypt, Al-Azhar and his sheikh, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, condemned the attack and said in a statement that “there is in no way a justification for such hateful terrorist acts that are incompatible with the tolerant teachings of Islam and all religions. heavenly “, calling for” the need to work to counter all acts of violence, extremism, hatred and intolerance. ” “.
In Paris, representatives of the National Assembly observed a minute of silence for the victims and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said that the people of Nice “can count on the support of the city of Paris and the Parisians.”
The representative of the French Council of the Islamic Faith strongly condemned the attack, saying: “As evidence of mourning and solidarity with the victims and their loved ones, I call on all Muslims in France to cancel all celebrations of the Prophet’s birth.”
On the other hand, the president of the Council of European Muslims, Samir Al-Falih, condemned what he described as the reckless attack on the church of Notre Dame in Nice.
Al-Falih criticized, in a press interview, what he called the terrorist acts that plague France, stressing that Islam and Muslims are innocent of them, and that those who commit them must be confronted in the name of religion.
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