France raises its alert level to maximum after knife attack in Nice

PARIS: French Prime Minister Jean Castex said the country’s threat level will rise to the maximum after an attack near a church in Nice killed three people on Thursday (October 29).

The move comes just hours before France enters its second coronavirus lockdown.

The attack in the Mediterranean city was the third in two months in France amid a growing furor over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were republished by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Other clashes and attacks were reported on Thursday in the southern city of Avignon and in the Saudi city of Jeddah, but it was not immediately clear whether they were related to the attack in Nice.

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Thursday’s attacker in Nice was wounded by police and hospitalized after the murders at Notre-Dame Basilica, less than 1 km from where another attacker crashed a truck into a 2016 Bastille Day crowd, killing to dozens of people.

France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into the Nice killings, marking the third attack since the September opening of the trial of 14 people related to the January 2015 killings at Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.

The gunmen from the 2015 attacks affirmed their allegiance to the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda.

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.

“He shouted ‘Allah Akbar!’ over and over again, even after he was injured, ”said Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, who told BFM television that two women and one man had died, two inside the church and a third who fled to a nearby bar. but he was mortally wounded.

“The meaning of his gesture left no room for doubt.”

LEE: Knife attacks in France since 2015

The French media showed the Nice 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.

Prime Minister Castex ran from the courtroom to a crisis center monitoring the aftermath of the Nice attack.

French President Emmanuel Macron was scheduled to head to Nice later that day.

In the southern city of Avignon, later in the morning, police shot dead a gunman after he refused to drop his gun and a flash shot did not stop him, a police officer said.

And a Saudi state news agency said a man stabbed a guard at the French consulate in Jeddah, wounding the guard before being arrested.

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The French Council of the Muslim Faith condemned the Nice attack and called on French Muslims to refrain from this week’s festivities that mark the birth of Muhammad “as a sign of mourning and in solidarity with the victims and their loved ones.”

Islamic State extremists released a video on Wednesday renewing calls for attacks on France.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attack in Nice.

“We stand in solidarity with the people of France against terrorism and violence,” the statement said.

Relations between Turkey and France reached a new low after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday accused Macron of Islamophobia over the cartoons and questioned his mental health, prompting Paris to call its ambassador to Turkey to queries.

The attack came less than two weeks after another 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 and killed the newspaper’s employees 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.