[ad_1]
French police were looking for a gunman who shot and seriously wounded a Greek Orthodox priest in the city of Lyon yesterday afternoon.
The latest attack came two days after a terrorist killed three people in a church in Nice and two weeks after the beheading of a high school teacher.
Police and soldiers immediately sealed off Lyon’s 7th arrondissement in search of the gunman and then made an arrest. The priest, said to be a 52-year-old Greek citizen, was closing the church when the man armed with a sawed-off shotgun shot him several times and hit him twice in the stomach.
French television reports that it appears to be a “personal dispute”. Police say they are analyzing all the motives, but advise journalists not to jump to conclusions that the incident is related to “terror”, despite tensions and the high level of alert in France.
On Saturday, French counter-terrorism police continued to question three men in connection with the Nice attack as they tried to reconstruct the killer’s movements and establish whether he had accomplices.
A 47-year-old man, who was taken into police custody hours after Thursday’s attack and who had reportedly been in contact with the attacker Brahim Issaoui the day before, remains in detention. Investigators did not elaborate on the arrests of two other men, ages 33 and 35.
Issaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian who killed the three people at the city’s Notre Dame basilica, remains in serious condition in hospital after police shot him inside the church. Issaoui was originally named Aouissaoui according to an Italian Red Cross document he carried, but his correct identity was confirmed by his family in Bou Hajla near Sfax in Tunisia.
Over the weekend, shocked and heartbroken locals continued to lay flowers outside the Notre Dame de l’Assomption basilica. Among the crowd, a woman’s cry rose like a collective lament: “Why us? Why us again?
It was a sentiment that was echoed throughout France. The Nice murders hit a country already reeling from the beheading of a history teacher outside his high school near Paris less than two weeks earlier. Samuel Paty, 47, had shown his students two cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of a discussion about freedom of expression. The reprint of the Charlie Hebdo The cartoons have sparked a wave of anti-French protests in Islamic countries, and France has been on high alert.
On Saturday, President Emmanuel Macron tried to quell anti-French protests in a 55-minute interview with Al Jazeera. Macron said he “understands the feelings of Muslims about the cartoons” of the prophet. “The cartoons are not a government project but rather the product of free and independent newspapers that are not affiliated with the government.”
He added: “I think the reactions were due to lies and misrepresentations and because people think I am in favor of these cartoons.”
When the government began expelling people and dissolving organizations it accused of fomenting “Islamism”, which in French is understood as “Islamist fundamentalism”, in the wake of Paty’s murder on 16 October, the terrorist attack in Nice involved a new kick a country that was still down. Hours later, a new and strict national Covid-19 blockade took effect that added to a feeling of despondency.
Discouragement was particularly acute in Nice. In five years, the city of the Riviera has suffered three terrorist attacks. In February 2015, three soldiers on patrol outside a Jewish community center in Nice were wounded by a man who swore allegiance to the Islamic State. In 2016, a terrorist hit a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day, killing 86 and wounding 458.
The past week had started with Turkey and France exchanging verbal blows and anti-Macron protests after the French president insisted that newspapers and magazines like Charlie Hebdo he had the right to publish contested cartoons. In the middle of the week it was, according to the Minister of the Interior, Gérard Darmanin, “a war”, not of words but of ideologies. Then came Nice.
A lone candle on the granite pavement next to a small bouquet of primroses marked the spot where Simone Barreto Silva, 44, collapsed from her knife wounds. It was here, in Unik’s kebab shop, while the paramedics were taking care of her, that she spoke her last words: “Tell my children that I love them.”
Michel Atiah, head waiter at neighboring restaurant Le Socrate, described Silva as the life and soul of the party. “She was a charming woman and very popular in the neighborhood.”
Another regular at Le Socrate was Vincent Loquès, the church’s sacristan, who died inside the basilica. “We saw it often. Vincent was a kind and charming man who used to eat here regularly.
“This is a mixed community, I am originally from Syria. We all deplore this action. Nice has been shaken by what happened yesterday and what happened on the seafront four years ago. But it is important to remember that these are lone wolves, not representative of the Islamic community. “
On Saturday, the killer’s first victim was named Nadine Devillers, 60. “He often went to pray for the people he loved. Every now and then he lit a candle. He was someone who loved others, gave everything for others, ”said her friend Joëlle Guichard. Good Morning Newspaper.
Inevitably, the far right has called for expulsions and a moratorium on immigration from certain countries that hold anti-French protests. Marine Le Pen has called the attacks “acts of war” that require a military response. At a rally in Nice on Thursday night, supporters shouted for Muslims to “go home”, and on rue Alsace Lorraine, near the basilica, protesters banged on the windows of a North African restaurant.
“That’s not the smart approach to take,” said Nathalie, who works at the Brunet Bakery down the street. “Retaliating against innocent people is not going to correct the act of a lone madman.”
He added: “Monsieur Loquès came here practically every day for his baguettes. He was a kind and gentle man. I don’t think we are in danger of being overwhelmed by hatred, rather by an outburst of anger. We have to be careful with that. “
On Sunday, French soldiers, policemen and gendarmes will be sent to protect churches and other places of worship for the important Toussaint – All Saints – Holidays.
In Trappes, southwest of Paris, in Yvelines, the department where Paty was murdered, which has a large Muslim community, officials and religious leaders will plant an olive tree outside the Catholic church.
Ali Rabeh, mayor of Trappes, said it was a “symbolic gesture of solidarity” with the Catholic community. Rabeh warned politicians not to escalate the rhetoric of war and stigmatize “99.9% of French Muslims who are calm, peaceful and do not want to upset anyone.”
“The political climate is increasingly accusatory. Every time there is an attack, ordinary Muslims feel that the finger is pointed at them, that they bear the brunt of the accusations, ”Rabeh told Observer. She said she was horrified to discover that her father, a Muslim who came to France from Morocco 50 years ago and had worked “to help build this country” for more than four decades, “now feels like he has to lower his head when shopping. “.
