A man armed with a knife has killed three people – two women and a man – in a terrorist attack at a church in Nice on the Côte d’Azur.
The killings happened at 9am on Thursday inside the Notre-Dame Basilica in the city centre. There were unconfirmed reports in the French media that at least one of the victims had been beheaded.
Police described the scene as a “vision of horror”. The national anti-terrorist prosecutor said an investigation had been opened into “killings linked to a terrorist organisation”.
The attacker was shot in the shoulder by police and taken to hospital.
The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, said the man had said “Allahu Akbar” several times while he was being arrested and handcuffed by police.
He said one of the female victims had been “decapitated” but he had no details of how the two others were killed.
“We have two people killed inside the church … and a third person who was in a bar facing the church where she had taken refuge,” Estrosi said. “Enough is enough … we have to remove this Islamo-fascism from our territory.”
Two weeks ago a history teacher, Samuel Paty, 47, was beheaded outside his secondary school after showing his class caricatures, including one of the prophet Muhammad, during a discussion on free speech. His murder prompted the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to promise a crackdown on Islamist extremism, including shutting down mosques and organisations accused of fomenting radicalism and violence.
Map of attack
The knifeman entered the church at 9am on Thursday and within 10 minutes had killed three people, one of them a sacristain (church warden). He was “neutralised” by police in the church at 9.10am.
A witness called David, who runs the Brioche Chaude restaurant, opposite the church, told BFMTV he had alerted the police.
“I was selling croissants when a man came in and said to me: ‘Monsieur, there’s a decapitated woman in the cathedral’. I didn’t believe him at first but he repeated it. I went to the cathedral and saw the municipal police and called to them. They came quickly.
“I went back [to the restaurant] and pulled down the security grill.”
He added: “The person who came in [to the restaurant] was someone who had been in the cathedral who was very shocked. He just said: ‘Monsieur there is a woman decapitated in the cathedral’. That’s all. I was shocked. I’m still shaking.”
Police immediately locked down the city centre.
The attacker was not carrying identity papers, according to the police, who have taken fingerprints to establish if he is known to security services.
Estrosi said the whole of Nice was deeply shocked: “Before it was a school professor, this time the Islamo-fascist barbarism chose to attack inside a church. Again, it is very symbolic,” Estrosi added.
President Macron is heading to Nice.
Thursday’s attack was a grim reminder of the killing of Father Jacques Hamel in his Normandy church in July 2016. The 85-year-old priest’s throat was cut by two men with knives who also took two nuns and two worshippers hostage.
In July 2016 a terrorist drove a 19-tonne truck into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day on Nice’s famous Promenade des Anglais, killing 86 people and injuring 458 others. The driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian living in France, was shot and killed by police.
After the killing of Paty at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on 16 October, Macron said France was engaged in an “existential” battle against Islamist fundamentalism.
His comments and support for the publication of controversial caricatures of Muhammad by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo have sparked angry protests across the Muslim world, with pictures of the president being burned and calls for a boycott of French goods.
The prime minister, Jean Castex, left the Assemblée National urgently on Thursday after a minute’s silence was held, and joined the interior minister, Gérard Darmanin, in a “crisis cell” at the ministry.
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