Security tightened after attack

NICE, FRANCE >> Mourners lit candles and prayed silently Friday to honor three people killed in a knife attack at a church, as France heightened security at potential targets at home and abroad amid outrage over its defense of the right to publish cartoons mocking the prophet of Islam.

The attacker, who recently arrived in Europe from Tunisia, was hospitalized with life-threatening wounds, and investigators in France and his homeland are looking into his motives and connections, though authorities had previously said he acted alone. Tunisian antiterrorism authorities opened an investigation Friday into an online claim of responsibility by a person who said the attack on the Notre Dame Basilica in the city of Nice was staged by an unknown Tunisian extremist group.

From Pakistan to Russia and Lebanon, Muslims held more protests Friday to show their anger at caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were recently republished in a French newspaper as well as at French President Emmanuel Macron’s defense of that decision and strong stance against political Islam.

Macron’s government stood firm, and called up thousands of reserve soldiers to protect France and reinforce security at French sites abroad. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that the country is “at war” with Islamist extremists, and a conservative lawmaker for the Nice region called for a “Frenchstyle Guantanamo” to lock up terrorist suspects.

Many French Muslims denounced the killings, while warning against stigmatizing the country’s peaceful Muslim majority.