A knife attacker went on a killing spree on Thursday as he cut the throat of at least one woman, inside a church in Nice on the French Riviera, AFP reported. Two other persons — a church employee and a woman in her 40s were killed in the attack.
What is known about the attack?
At 8:29 am French time (0729 GMT) a man with a knife began attacking people praying inside the Basilica of Notre-Dame in the heart of the Mediterranean city.
The attacker had a copy of the Koran and three knives with him, France’s anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard told a news conference.
In a near half-hour frenzy in the Notre-Dame Basilica in the centre of Nice, the assailant used a 30 centimetre (12 inches) knife to carry out the attack.
Who were the victims?
The killer cut the throat of a 60-year-old woman, whom he tried to behead, AFP reported. She died inside the church.
The body of a man, a 55-year-old church employee, was found nearby inside the basilica — his throat had also been slit. He was the church’s sacristan, a father of two girls, according to Canon Philippe Asso, the church’s most senior cleric, AFP reported.
Another woman, a 44-year-old who had fled the church to a nearby restaurant, died shortly afterwards from multiple knife wounds.
“Tell my children I love them,” she managed to say before her death, according to French cable channel BFM TV.
What is known about the killer?
The police arrived shortly after the killer, a 21-year-old Tunisian man, went on the killing spree.
He was shot and wounded by the police, AFP reported.
He continued to shout “Allah Akbar” (God is greatest), even as he was being arrested. He was later rushed to the city’s Pasteur hospital.
The 21-year-old Tunisian suspect only arrived in France earlier this month after coming to Europe on a migrant boat via the Italian island of Lampedusa at the end of September, an official source told AFP.
The suspected knifeman called himself “Brahim” when he was arrested and later claimed to be Brahim Aouissaoui, the source added.
Investigation and official statements
The French authorities are treating it as a terror attack, with the anti-terrorist prosecutor immediately opening an inquiry into “murder and attempted murder linked to a terrorist enterprise.”
President Emmanuel Macron called it an “Islamist terrorist attack,” AFP reported.
Similar incidents
Thursday’s crime comes two weeks after Samuel Paty, a teacher was beheaded outside his school north of the capital Paris. The teacher had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of speech.
