French priest killed by ‘IS’ in church attack

The Islamic State group said on Tuesday that two of its “soldiers” had attacked a French church, slitting a priest’s throat in a country stunned by a series of jihadist attacks.

The hostage drama in the Normandy town of Saint-Etiennedu-Rouvray comes with France already shaken to the core after a massacre in the French Riviera city of Nice less than two weeks ago, which left 84 people dead and was also claimed by IS.

President Francois Hollande said the two men who stormed a church before killing the elderly Catholic priest had claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group before being shot dead by police.

Shortly afterwards the IS-linked Amaq news agency, citing a “security source”, said the perpetrators were “soldiers of the Islamic State who carried out the attack in response to calls to target countries of the Crusader coalition”.

The two attackers stormed the church during morning mass, taking the five people inside hostage, including the priest, interior ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet said.

He said the church was surrounded by polite from the elite BRI unit, which specialises in kidnappings, and that “the two assailants came out and were killed by police”.

The priest died after his throat was slit, sources close to the investigation said.

The archbishop of the nearby city of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, named him as 84-year-old Jacques Hamel, although the website of the archdiocese states he was born in 1930.

Three of the hostages were freed unharmed, and another was fighting for their life, said Brandet.

Hollande appealed for “unity” in France, where political blame-trading has poisoned the aftermath of the truck attack, the third major strike in the country in 18 months. AFP