France mourns 3 people killed in church attack

NICE, FRANCE — Mourners lit candles and prayed silently Friday to honour three people killed in a knife attack at a church, as France heightened security at potential targets at home and abroad amid outrage over its defence of the right to publish cartoons mocking the prophet of Islam.

The attacker, who recently arrived in Europe from Tunisia, was hospitalized with lifethreatening wounds and investigators in France and his homeland are looking into his motives and connections, though authorities had previously said he acted alone. Tunisian antiterrorism authorities opened an investigation Friday into an online claim of responsibility by a person who said the attack on the Notre Dame Basilica in the Mediterranean city of Nice was staged by a previously unknown Tunisian extremist group.

From Pakistan to Russia and Lebanon, Muslims held more protests Friday to show their anger at caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were recently republished in a French newspaper as well as at French President Emmanuel Macron’s staunch defence of that decision and strong stance against political Islam.

Macron’s government stood firm and called up thousands of reserve soldiers to protect France and reinforce security at French sites abroad.

Many French Muslims denounced the killings, while warning against stigmatizing the country’s peaceful Muslim majority.

As France entered a new virus lockdown Friday, four soldiers with rifles periodically walked past the church in Nice, and mourners prayed silently for the three victims.

They included 55-year-old church warden Vincent Loques, a father of two.

Another victim was Brazilianborn Simone Barreto Silva, a 44-year-old mother of three.

The attack was the third in less than two months that French authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists, including the beheading of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a civics lesson.