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An attacker armed with a knife killed three people in a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice, authorities say. It is the third attack in two months in France.
A woman was beheaded during the knife attack on Thursday morning (local time), Reuters reported.
The attacker was wounded by police and hospitalized after the Notre Dame church killings, less than a kilometer from the site in 2016, where another attacker crashed a truck into a Bastille Day crowd, killing dozens.
Alexis Gilli / AP
Authorities are responding after a knife attack in Nice, France, left three dead.
Thursday’s attacker is believed to have been acting alone and police are not looking for other attackers, said two police officers, who were not authorized to be publicly identified.
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France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into the killings, marking the third attack since the September opening of a terrorism trial in the January 2015 killings at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
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The attack occurred at the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice, France.
“He shouted ‘Allah Akbar!’ over and over again, even after he was injured, ”said Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, who told BFM television that three people had died, two inside the church and a third who fled but was mortally wounded.
The meaning of his gesture left no room for doubt.
“Everything suggests a terrorist attack on the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice,” Estrosi previously tweeted.
In Nice, French media images showed the neighborhood closed and surrounded by police and emergency vehicles. Sounds of explosions could be heard as sappers exploded suspicious objects.
The lower house of parliament suspended a debate on the new virus restrictions in France and observed a minute of silence on Thursday for the victims. The prime minister rushed out of the hall to a crisis center that was monitoring the aftermath of the Nice attack. French President Emmanuel Macron was heading to Nice later that day.
Alexis Gilli / AP
French counter-terrorism prosecutors are investigating the knife attack on the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice, France.
Less than two weeks ago, an assailant beheaded a French high school teacher who was showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on freedom of expression. Those cartoons were published by Charlie Hebdo and cited by the men who shot to death at the newspaper’s editorial meeting in 2015.
In September, a man who had applied for asylum in France attacked passersby in front of Charlie Hebdo’s former offices with a butcher knife.
– AP, additional reports from Stuff
