Macron stays defiant as knifeman
French president vows not to give ground after man stabs three worshippers to death at basilica service
‘This isn’t the Nice we know. I am very angry. We are no longer safe. I feel like we’re living a nightmare’
‘France is very clearly under attack. For our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief ’
WHEN Catholic churchgoers entered the basilica of Notre-dame in the Riviera city of Nice yesterday morning, it was to say quiet final prayers before France descended into a month-long lockdown to stem its raging coronavirus outbreak.
Instead, at 8.30am in the Neo-gothic church – Nice’s l argest – screams erupted in the white and gold building as a 21-year old Tunisian brandishing a large knife jumped out of the shadows and pounced on a worshipper aged 60, partially beheading her.
The suspect, identified as Brahim Aoussaoui, had arrived in Nice by train from Paris two hours earlier, at 6.47am, changing clothes before walking 400 metres to the church at 8.13am, according to Paris prosecutor Jean-françois Ricard. Leaving his first victim with a “very deep throat wound, basically a decapitation”, he then turned on Vincent Loquès, 55, the church warden and a father of two girls, stabbing him and slitting his throat.
He then launched a frenzied assault on a woman aged 44, who managed to run across the road to a hamburger outlet where she died of her wounds shortly afterwards.
“I heard people screaming,” said Jacques Dalmasso, who lives in the area. He said he knew Mr Loquès, adding: “We used to drink coffee in the morning together at the boulangerie.”
He told The Daily Telegraph: “I was standing at the cash dispenser. I left my credit card in the machine and ran. I saw a woman run out of the cathedral, around 40. She came out of a door and hid in the Isla Burger restaurant,” The boulangerie manager, Laila, said: “This isn’t the Nice we know. I am very angry. We are no longer safe. I feel like we’re living a nightmare.”
Daniel Conilh, a 32-year-old waiter at the Grand Café de Lyon, a block from the church, said “shots were fired and everybody took off running” as national and municipal police stormed the building and shot the suspect, critically injuring him.
“A woman came in straight from the church and said, ‘Run, run, someone has been stabbing people’,” he said.
A copy of the Koran belonging to the suspect, two telephones and a bag containing two other knives were found in the church.
As sirens wailed, a grim-faced Christian Estrosi, Nice’s mayor, said there could be no doubt that this was once again the work of Islamist extremism in a city that had already “paid a very high price” for terrorism. The city is still scarred from a 2016 attack in which a terrorist ploughed his truck into Bastille Day crowds at Nice’s Promenade des Anglais, killing 86.
The assailant “didn’t stop shouting Allahu Akhbar even under medication” said Mr Estrosi. The suspect was in a critical but stable condition in Nice’s Pasteur hospital last night, where police had to bar a group of around 40 individuals bent on lynching the assailant.
“Enough is enough,” said Mr Estrosi. “It is time now that France rid itself of the rules of peace to annihilate the scourge of Islamo-fascism.”
But the day of terror was far from over. In a second attack that took place two hours later, an armed man threatened people on the streets of Avignon – 120 miles from Nice – before he was fatally shot by police. Police believe he was a far-right extremist.
In Saudi Arabia, a security guard was stabbed and wounded outside the French consulate in Jeddah. In France, two other men were arrested. One was seized while carrying a knife near a church in Sartrouville, a Paris suburb, after his father reported he was about to carry out a Nice-style attack.
A second man of Afghan origin and “known to intelligence services” was arrested carrying a long blade as he tried to board a train in Lyon.
“France is very clearly under attack,” declared President Macron.
Speaking from the scene of the Nice attack, he said France had been targeted “over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief,” before adding: “And I say it with lots of clarity again today: we will not give any ground.”
France’s anti- t error prosecutor launched an investigation into murder and attempted murder.
It is not the first time a French church has been the target of terror.
In July, 2016, two Islamists slit the throat of 85-year- old priest Jacques