2 more arrests in Nice knife attack
PARIS — French authorities said Friday that they had arrested two men suspected of being in contact with an assailant who killed three people at a church in Nice the day before, an attack that rattled the country and reignited fears of terrorism as officials blamed some foreign leaders for stoking hatred of France.
Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, said France faced a highlevel threat of terrorism and was being “particularly targeted” because of what he called the country’s staunch defense of freedom of expression and secularism.
Debates about cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have strained France’s relations with some Muslimmajority countries since the beheading of a teacher in a Paris suburb by a Muslim man this month.
In Thursday’s attack, a man entered the Notre Dame basilica in Nice on Thursday and fatally attacked three people with a 7inch knife. The police confronted the assailant while the attack was in progress, shooting and wounding him. The suspect, a Tunisian man in his early 20s, is still hospitalized.
It was not immediately clear how the additional men might be connected to the attack or what contacts they had with the main suspect, who was not known to the French police or intelligence services.
The assault in Nice bore similarities to the recent killing of Samuel Paty, a schoolteacher, near Paris. He was decapitated by an 18yearold Muslim man who was angered that Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
Since Paty’s killing, the French authorities have undertaken a broad crackdown against what they characterized as Islamist extremists in France, conducting dozens of raids and disbanding two groups that they accused of “advocating radical Islam” and hate speech.
In the aftermath of the attack, the response by French officials has been denounced by some Muslim leaders. Darmanin singled out some leaders for promoting “extremely strong calls to hatred” against France, including “scandalous” comments by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who has questioned President Emmanuel Macron’s mental health.