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It was already the second attack this month linked to Islamist terrorism.
France “will not renounce our values,” Macron said in the southern town of Nice, where a Tunisian migrant armed with a 12-inch-long knife attacked believers in the Basilica of Our Lady on Thursday and killed three people in a attack that lasted almost half an hour.
“If they attack us again, it is only because of the values that we profess, our freedom, that we can freely believe in our country. We are not going to deny it,” French President Macron said after a meeting with police and emergency management in the Notre-Dame Basilica in Nice.
The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, who accompanied the French president, said in a statement and speech on Twitter that the woman was beheaded Thursday morning, but did not provide details of how two more people died, only assured that the suspect was arrested, writes Bloomberg.
“France is not a country of disrespect or rejection, it is a country of tolerance, do not listen to those who try to instill otherwise. The Islamic religion and Muslim culture are part of European and French history, and we respect it, “French Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian said in Parliament.
When a young man of Chechen descent was beheaded on October 16 in Paris by teacher Samuel Paty, who showed students cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad during civic education lessons, Macron said France was involved in an “existential” war. and highlighted during a ceremony in honor of “We are not going to deny those cartoons.”
In France, the right to blasphemy is enshrined in law as an element of freedom of expression, but for most Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is highly offensive.
Good mayor Ch. Comments made by Estros showed how the tone in France was hardening after such tragedies.
“It just came to our notice then.” It is time for France to free itself from peacetime laws and defend Islamic fascism on our territory forever, “said the mayor of the city where the attack took place.
One of the victims of the attack, a 60-year-old woman, died in a basilica in the heart of this Mediterranean city. Nearby was the body of a 55-year-old church worker with his throat slit. The third victim, a 44-year-old Brazilian, died of his injuries in a bar near the basilica where he hid after the attack.
French cable television BFM TV reported that the woman’s last words before her death were: “Tell my children that I love them.”
The attacker was shot dead by the police. Court sources reported that it was Brahim Aouissaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian. He arrived in Italy last month and from there he arrived in France.
Aouissaoui, who had the Koran and three knives with him, shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater than all) when the police who appeared shot him and seriously injured him, prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said at a press conference.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi told reporters at the scene of the attack that the attacker “kept repeating” Allahu Akbar “even when they injected him with drugs” and took him to hospital.
The new attack came as tensions continued after the brutal murder of a teacher that shocked France in mid-October. On October 16, in the Parisian suburb of Konflan Saint Honorine, the young Chechen Abdullakh Anzorov beheaded Samuel Paty, a professor of history, geography and civics.
A few days before his murder, S. Paty showed his students cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad as an example of freedom of expression.
Images of the Prophet are strictly prohibited by Islam.
Macron defended cartoons and the right to ridicule religion, although this sparked outrage in the Muslim world.
A wave of protests against France broke out in several Muslim countries and calls were made for a boycott of French products. They were joined by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said it would be worthwhile for the French leader to “test the psyche” for his sharp rhetoric on radical Islam.
“It avoided more victims”
Daniel Conilh, a 32-year-old waiter at Lyon’s Le Grand Café, one block from the Basilica of Our Lady, said “The shots fired and everyone fled.”
“A woman who came from church said: ‘Run, run, someone is starving,'” he told AFP.
French prosecutors against terrorism are investigating allegations of “terrorist killings”.
The police officers, subjected to Mr. Aouissaoui, “undoubtedly avoided more victims,” said Mr. J.-F. Ricard added that investigators found a bag containing two more knives at the scene of the attack.
Following an attack approaching All Saints’ Day, the government has declared that the entire country is prepared for possible terrorist attacks.
High level of preparation
In France, a high level of preparedness for potential terrorist attacks has been maintained since the January 2015 issue of the bloody attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which launched a wave of jihadist attacks that claimed more than 250 lives.
Tensions in the country escalated last month with the trial of 13 men and women accused of aiding and inciting the perpetrators of the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s editorial staff.
The weekly marked the beginning of the trial by republishing millions of Muslims around the world who had outraged the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which were later used as teaching aids by Master S. Paty during his lesson.
A few days after the trial began, an 18-year-old Pakistani in Charlie Hebdo’s former Paris office seriously injured two people in a meat grinder.
In Nice, Macron announced that the number of Sentinelle troops in the counterterrorism forces monitoring churches would increase from 3,000 to 7,000.
According to the president, the protection of schools will also be strengthened.
Still, some say Macron is wrongly targeting the French Muslim community, which numbers between 5 and 6 million. Member States and is the largest in Europe.
The president on Thursday urged people of all faiths to come together and “not surrender to the divisive spirit.”
Painful memories
Following Thursday’s attack, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad wrote on Twitter that “Muslims have the right to resent and kill millions of French people over past massacres.”
A little later, Twitter deleted this post.
In another attack on Thursday, a Saudi national armed with a knife wounded a security guard at a French consulate in Jeddah.
At the time, police in the southeastern city of Lyon, France, reportedly detained an Afghan with a long knife while trying to board a tram.
The painful memories of the jihadist attack on July 14, 2016, as the country celebrated Bastille Day, are still alive in Nice. At that time, the attacker, targeting a crowd truck, killed 86 people.
Abdallah Zekri, director general of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM), condemned the attack in Nice and called on French Muslims not to celebrate Maulid, the Prophet’s birthday on Thursday, “in solidarity with the victims and their loved ones” .
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