1 hostage, 2 attackers, die as IS hits church

Country is under a state of emergency in the wake of Nice attack which claimed 84 lives

Two attackers seized hostages on Tuesday in a church near the Normandy city of Rouen, killing a priest in his mid-80s by slitting the throat before being shot and killed by police, French officials said.

Another person inside the church was seriously injured and is hovering between life and death, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.

Police managed to rescue three people from the church in the small northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-duRouvray, Brandet said. The hostage-taking occurred during morning Mass, he said.

French President Francois Hollande said later the two hostage takers were terrorists who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State. The IS news agency Amaq said two of its “soldiers” had carried out the attack.

“Daesh has declared war on us, we must fight this war by all means, while respecting the rule of law, what makes us a democracy,” he told reporters at the scene, using an Arab acronym for the extremist group.

Brandet, speaking on BFM TV, said the RAID special intervention force was searching the church and its perimeter for possible explosives and terrorism investigators had been summoned.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls branded the attack

Briefly

“barbaric” and said it was a blow to all Catholics and the whole of France. “We will stand together,” Valls said.

France is currently on high alert after an attack in Nice on Bastille Day — July 14 — that killed 84 people and a string of deadly attacks last year claimed by the IS group that killed 147 others. France is also under a state of emergency and has extra police presence in the wake of the Nice attack in which a man barreled his truck down the city’s Promenade des Anglais, mowing down holiday crowds.

Dark experience

IS extremists have urged followers to attack French churches and the group was believed to have planned at least one church attack earlier.

In April 2015, an Algerian student who was arrested after shooting himself in the leg was found with heavy weapons, bulletproof vests and documents linked to the extremist group. He is charged with killing a woman inside her car the same day. According to authorities, the suspect, Sid Ahmed Ghlam, was sent by the Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud to attack a church in Villejuif, just outside of Paris.

A cell directed by Abaaoud later carried out the Nov 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and the March 22 attacks in Brussels that killed 32 people.