Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
France says killer of 3 a Tunisian
Knifings in Nice third attack in two months attributed to extremists
NICE, France — France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said the knife-wielding man who killed three in a Nice church Thursday was a Tunisian who entered France from Italy.
Jean-Francois Ricard detailed the gruesome scene encountered inside the Nice basilica where a man and woman were killed by the attacker. The third victim, a 44-year-old woman who managed to flee, died at a nearby restaurant.
A 60-year-old woman whose body was found at the entry of the church, suffered “a very deep throat slitting, like a decapitation,” Ricard said. The 55-year-old man also died after deep cuts on his throat, the prosecutor added.
Ricard said at a news conference late Thursday that the man arrived in Italy by reaching the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa on Sept. 20, and traveled to Paris on Oct. 9. The travel information came from a document on the man from the Italian Red Cross, Ricard said.
The attack in the Mediterranean city of Nice was the third in two months in France that authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists, including the beheading of a teacher.
It comes during a growing furor over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were republished in recent months by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo — renewing debate in France and the Muslim world over the depictions that Muslims consider offensive but are protected by French free speech laws. France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation, and President Emmanuel Macron said he would immediately increase the number of soldiers deployed to protect schools and religious sites from around 3,000 currently to 7,000.
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 attacked by extremists in recent years, and Thursday’s killings come ahead of the Roman Catholic All Saints’ holiday.
The assailant was wounded by police and hospitalized after the killings at the Notre Dame Basilica. 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.
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 Islamic State group and al-Qaida, which both recently called anew for strikes against France.
“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 the French city of 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.
The Saudi Press Agency report, citing police spokesman Maj. Mohammed al-Ghamdi, said the special force for diplomatic security was able to arrest the Saudi man after he stabbed the guard “using a sharp tool.” The attacker is said to be in his 40s. The guard was taken to a hospital for treatment, the agency said.