Attacker shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, police say
PARIS/NICE: As he did every day, Vincent Loques, sexton of the Notre Dame church in Nice, opened the doors about 8.30am on Thursday morning (local time).
But soon after he started work, a Tunisian man armed with a 30cm knife entered the church and, over the course of 20 minutes, slit the 55yearold sexton’s throat, beheaded a 60yearold woman and badly wounded a third woman (44), prosecutors say.
The sexton and the older woman died on the spot, while the younger woman managed to get to a cafe across the street, where she died from her wounds, France’s chief antiterrorist prosecutor JeanFrancois Ricard said.
The attacker was shot by police and is being treated in hospital.
The suspected attacker, named by French and Tunisian law enforcement sources as Brahim Aouissaoui (21) was captured on CCTV arriving at Nice railway station at 6.47am.
According to a timeline provided by Ricard, he stayed in the station for 26 minutes, during which he turned his coat inside out and changed his shoes.
At 8.13am, he set off to walk the 400m to the church, and entered at 8.26am before beginning his attack.
The first police on the scene were four officers from the Nice municipal force. They entered the church through the entrance on Rue d’Italie, and saw the attacker.
‘‘From the accounts of the police, the man advanced towards them in a threatening manner, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is greatest],’’ Ricard said.
The officers fired Tasers, then used service sidearms. Fourteen spent bullet cases were found at the scene.
When police examined the scene, they found the attacker had brought two spare knives, a copy of the Koran and two telephones.
Speaking outside the church later in the day, President Emmanuel Macron said France would deploy thousands more soldiers to protect important sites such as places of worship and schools, as the country’s security alert was raised to its highest level.
He said France had been attacked ‘‘over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief . . . And I say it with great clarity again today: We will not give any ground.’’ — Reuters