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PARIS (Reuters) – A Greek Orthodox priest was shot and seriously injured on Saturday in a church in the French city of Lyon by an assailant who later fled, a police source and witnesses said.
There was no clear indication of a motive in the hours after the attack and officials gave no indication that it was related to terrorism. Police and judicial sources said that anti-terrorist prosecutors had not been summoned.
The priest was shot twice around 4 pm (1500 GMT) as he was closing the church, and was being treated for life-threatening injuries, the police source said.
Witnesses said that the church, in the center of the city, was Greek Orthodox. Another police source said that the priest was of Greek nationality and that he had been able to inform emergency services when they arrived that he had not recognized his attacker.
A Greek government official identified the priest as Nikolaos Kakavelakis.
A suspect was arrested several hours later at a kebab shop in Lyon and taken into police custody, the first police source said. However, there was no confirmation that the person was the alleged assailant, nor was there any indication that the police were still looking for another person.
A source from the prosecutor’s office in Lyon said it had opened an investigation into the attempted murder and local authorities said the motive for the attack was not immediately clear.
The incident occurred two days after a man shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (God is the greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in Nice.
Two weeks ago, a school teacher in a Paris suburb was beheaded by an 18-year-old attacker who was apparently outraged by the teacher showing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad during a class.
Government ministers had warned that there could be other attacks by Islamist militants. President Emmanuel Macron has deployed thousands of soldiers to protect sites such as places of worship and schools.
(Reported by Catherine Lagrange, Sarah White and Marc Angrand; Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas in Athens; Written by Christian Lowe; Edited by Kevin Liffey)
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