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PARIS: A 47-year-old man believed to have been in contact with the alleged attacker who killed three people in a church in the French city of Nice has been detained for questioning, a judicial source said on Friday.
The man was arrested on Thursday night after the attack on the Notre Dame de Nice basilica by a 21-year-old Tunisian who arrived in France on October 9.
France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said the attacker, identified as Brahim Aouissaoui, had a copy of the Koran, two phones and three knives when he entered the church in the center of the Mediterranean city around 8:30. A.M
He slaughtered a 60-year-old woman and a 55-year-old man who worked in the church, and stabbed a 44-year-old woman who managed to flee but later died from their injuries.
The victims were “people attacked for no other reason than to be present in this church at the time,” Ricard said at a news conference Thursday night.
President Emmanuel Macron called it an “Islamist terrorist attack,” and the government has set its terror alert to maximum before the Catholic holiday of All Saints’ Day on Sunday.
Macron is holding an emergency meeting on the attack with top ministers on Friday.
