Three dead in knife attack in French church, woman beheaded

An attacker with a knife killed three people, including a woman who was decapitated, at a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday, police said, in an incident the city’s mayor described as terrorism.

Mayor Christian Estrosi said on Twitter that the knife attack had happened in or near the city’s Notre Dame church and that police had detained the attacker.

Police said that two people were confirmed to have died in the attack and several were injured.

A police source said that a woman was decapitated. French politician Marine Le Pen also spoke of a decapitation having occurred in the attack.

The attack comes while France is still reeling from the beheading earlier this month of French middle school teacher Samuel Paty in Paris by a man of Chechen origin.

The attacker had said he wanted to punish Paty for showing pupils blasphemous cartoons of the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) in a civics lesson.

It was not immediately clear what the motive was for the Nice attack, or if there was any connection to the caricatures.

Since Paty’s killing, French officials — backed by many ordinary citizens — have reasserted the right to display blasphemous caricatures, and the images have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with the killed teacher.

That has prompted an outpouring of anger in parts of the Muslim world, with some governments accusing French leader Emmanuel Macron of pursuing an antiIslam agenda.