NICE, France—A man armed with a knife attacked people inside a French church and killed three Thursday, prompting the government to raise its security alert to the maximum level hours before a nationwide coronavirus lockdown.
The attack in Mediterranean city of Nice was the third in two months that French authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists, including the beheading of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class after the images were republished by a satirical newspaper targeted in a 2015 attack.
The assailant in Thursday’s attack was seriously wounded by police and hospitalized after the killings at the Notre Dame Basilica, which is located half-mile from the site in 2016 where another attacker plowed a truck into a Bastille Day crowd, killing dozens of people.
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor says the suspect is a Tunisian born in 1999 who arrived in Italy by reaching the Mediterranean island of Lanpedusa on Sept. 20 and traveled to Paris on Oct. 9. He was carrying a copy of the Quran and had a bag with two unused knives, prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard told a press conference late Thursday.
The prosecutor said the attacker was not on the radar of intelligence agencies as a potential threat.
Ricard detailed the gruesome scene encountered inside the Nice basilica where a man and woman were killed by the attacker. The 60-year-old woman suffered “a very deep throat slitting, like a decapitation,” Ricard said. The 55-year-old man died after deep cuts to his throat, the prosecutor added. The third victim was a 44-year-old woman who managed to flee the church but died at a nearby restaurant.
An investigation was opened for murder and attempted murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise, a common term for such crimes. French President Emmanuel Macron said he would immediately increase the number of soldiers deployed to protect schools and religious sites from around 3,000 to 7,000.
The attack in Nice came amid a fierce debate in France and beyond over the republication of the Muhammad caricatures by satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
The French consulate in the Saudi city of Jiddah was also targeted Thursday, a man claiming allegiance to an anti-immigrant group was shot and killed by police in the southern French city of Avignon, and scattered confrontations were reported elsewhere, but it is unclear whether they were linked to the attack in Nice.
France’s national police chief had already ordered increased security at churches and mosques earlier this week, but no police appeared to be guarding the Nice church when it was attacked, and Associated Press reporters saw no visible security forces at multiple prominent religious sites in Paris on Thursday. French churches have been ferociously attacked by extremists in recent years, and Thursday’s killings come ahead of the Roman Catholic All Saints’ holiday.
Thursday’s attacker was believed to be acting alone, and police are not searching for other assailants, said two police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named.
“He cried ‘Allah Akbar!’ over and over, even after he was injured,” said Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, who confirmed a woman and a man died inside the church, while a second woman fled to a nearby bar but was mortally wounded. “The meaning of his gesture left no doubt.”
Shots punctuated the air and witnesses screamed as police stationed at the grandiose doors to the church appeared to fire at the attacker inside, according to videos obtained by The Associated Press. For a time after the attack, explosions could be heard as sappers detonated suspicious objects.
It was the third attack since Charlie Hebdo republished the caricatures in September as the trial opened for the 2015 attacks at the paper’s offices and a kosher supermarket. The gunmen in that attack claimed allegiance to the ISIS and al-Qaida terrorist groups, which both recently called anew for strikes against France.
A verdict is planned for Nov. 13, the fifth anniversary of another series of deadly Islamic State attacks in Paris.
The recent attacks come amid renewed outcry from Muslims over depictions of Muhammad—whose birthday was marked in several countries Thursday—and the French government’s fierce defense of the right to publish and show them. Muslims have held protests in several countries and called for a boycott of French goods. Dozens of Pakistani students rallied in the capital Thursday to denounce Macron.
“With the attack against Samual Paty, it was freedom of speech that was targeted,“ Prime Minister Jean Castex told lawmakers Thursday, referring to the teacher who was beheaded after showing his class caricatures of the prophet during a civics lesson. ”With this attack in Nice, it is freedom of religion.”
Earlier, the lower house of parliament suspended a debate on France’s new virus restrictions and held a moment of silence for the victims. Castex rushed from the hall to a crisis center overseeing the aftermath of the Nice attack and later returned to announce the alert level increase. Macron left for Nice almost immediately.
“Very clearly, it is France which is under attack,” Macron said as he stood before the church. He added that all of France offered its support to Catholics “so that their religion can be exercised freely in our country. So that every religion can be practiced. ”
In Avignon on Thursday morning, a man with a firearm was shot and killed by police after he refused to drop his weapon and a warning shot failed to stop him, a police official said. And a Saudi state-run news agency said a man stabbed a guard at the French consulate in Jiddah, wounding the guard before he was arrested.
While many groups and nations have been angered or frustrated by France’s position on the cartoons, several issued their condolences Thursday, as did France’s traditional allies.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith condemned the Nice attack and called on French Muslims to refrain from festivities marking the birth of Muhammad “as a sign of mourning and in solidarity with the families of victims and the Catholics of France.”
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attack. “We stand in solidarity with the people of France against terror and violence,” the statement said.
Relations between Turkey and France hit a new low after Turkey’s president accused Macron of Islamophobia over the caricatures and questioned his mental health, prompting Paris to recall its ambassador to Turkey for consultations.
The attack in Nice came less than two weeks after Paty, the teacher, was beheaded. In September, a man who had sought asylum in France attacked bystanders outside Charlie Hebdo’s former offices with a butcher knife.
French Jewish and Catholic sites have also frequently been targeted, including the killing of the Rev. Jaqcues Hamel, whose throat was slit while celebrating Mass in his Normandy church by Islamic terrorists and a plot to bomb Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral. Those attacks were claimed by ISIS, which also is believed to have recruited a man now on trial for a failed plot to attack a church.
Nice’s 19th-century basilica Notre Dame de l’Assomption is the largest church in the city, but smaller and newer than the cathedral 1 mile away. The basilica’s twin neogothic towers are a landmark feature in the heart of the city.
