‘It’s war,’ Pope says after priest’s slaying
More chilling details of killing emerge
PARIS — Horrifying details emerged Wednesday about an attack on a French village church.
Two attackers took five hostages Tuesday at the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in northwest France and slit the throat of the elderly priest saying morning mass. A nun at the mass slipped out to raise the alarm and both attackers, one of them a local man, were then killed by police outside the church.
Emotions in France, raw after a July 14 truck attack in Nice killed 84 people, became more frazzled after the church in Normandy was attacked. Both deadly attacks were claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Wednesday, the ISIL-affiliated Amaq news agency released a video allegedly showing the church attackers sitting on a floor, clasping hands and pledging allegiance to ISIL.
The speaker in the video identified himself by the jihadist nom de guerre Abul Jaleel al-Hanafi, and said his compatriot was called Ibn Omar. French prosecutors have previously identified the former as Adel Kermiche, a 19-year-old who grew up in the town and tried to travel to Syria twice last year.
Pope Francis, visiting Krakow, Poland, for World Youth Day celebrations, said of the slaying of the priest: “It’s war, we don’t have to be afraid to say this.”
He then clarified to say, “I am not speaking of a war of religions. Religions don’t want war. The others want war.”
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said France is working to protect 56 remaining summer events and may consider cancelling some. Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said 4,000 members of the Sentinel military force will patrol Paris, while 6,000 will patrol in the provinces. They are being bolstered by tens of thousands of police and reservists.
One of the hostages, an 86-year-old woman, said the attackers handed her husband a cellphone and demanded he take photos or video of the priest, 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel, after he was slain. Her husband was then slashed in four places by the attackers and is in hospital with serious injuries.
The woman, identified only as Jeanine, told RMC radio her husband, Guy, played dead to stay alive. Two nuns were held hostage along with the couple and the priest.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the attackers had knives and fake explosives — one a phoney suicide belt covered in tin foil.
Molins also said Kermiche was previously detained outside France, sent home, handed preliminary terrorism charges and placed under house arrest with a tracking bracelet. He was allowed free movement within the region with the bracelet deactivated for four hours a day. The second attacker has not been formally identified.
President Francois Hollande presided over a defence council and cabinet meeting in Paris after speaking with Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish leaders.
The archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, called on Catholics to “overcome hatred that comes in their heart” and not to allow ISIL “to set children of the same family upon each other.”
Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the main Paris mosque, said France’s Muslims must push for better training of Muslim clerics and urged that reforming French Muslim institutions be put on the agenda.