Priest shot in Lyon – the perpetrator on the run – VG

According to the Lyoncapitale newspaper, the incident took place in the city’s seventh district, on Rue Père Chevrier.

The shots fell around 4 p.m. on Saturday. According to Le Figaro, the priest was shot at the entrance as he was about to close the church. The author is said to have fired two shots, police told the newspaper. According to a source in the newspaper, the priest from the 1950s had previously had a dispute with a man who had assaulted him.

The priest is a Greek citizen, writes the newspaper. The French newspaper Le Progres writes that the priest was seriously injured, even conscious, when he was transported. He was in critical condition when the firefighters took him away, but according to Le Progres he must have expressed that he did not know the attacker.

in a Twitter posts calls on the French Interior Minister to evacuate the area where the shooting took place. National and local police forces are in place, he says, and police are actively searching for the perpetrator, who fled the scene.

The shots were fired at the priest two days after a Tunisian attacked and stabbed three people near and inside Nice Cathedral. All three, including church servant Vincent Loquès, died from their injuries. It is not yet clear whether there is any connection between the attack in Lyon and the attack in Nice.

In light of the events, the Minister of the Interior has created a separate crisis unit:

– Evacuate the sector and follow the advice. All support to our security forces and emergency services on site. I travel back to Paris to open a crisis unit, together with the president and vice president, writes Gérald Darmanin on Twitter.

Promotion of “individual jihad”

Last Sunday, the French interior minister sounded an internal terror alert after Thabat – a news agency with close ties to Al-Qaeda – published a call for an individual jihad against French targets.

According to Le Figaro, religious institutions, resorts and embassies were on the list of proposed destinations. They must also have proposed specific methods, such as knife attacks and crowd collisions.

Recently, there have been large demonstrations in Muslim countries against French President Emmanuel Macron’s support for the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the name of freedom of expression. On Saturday, Macron told Al-Jazeera that he understands the feelings Muslims have for the cartoons.

– But the drawings are not a public project, they come from free and independent newspapers that are not affiliated with the authorities.

Furthermore, the French president believes that attacks such as the knife terror in Nice on Thursday are carried out by those who distort the teachings of Islam. Following the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty in early October, the debate over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has returned to the agenda in France.

The case is being updated.