One of the three victims of the Nice knife attack has been named by Brazil’s foreign ministry as Simone Barreto Silva, a 44-year-old woman who worked as a carer for the elderly.
Silva, who was born in the Brazilian state of Bahia, was a citizen of France, where she had reportedly lived for around three decades.
In a statement the foreign ministry said it lamented and condemned “this heinous attack” on Silva and was offering support to her family.
“President Jair Bolsonaro, in the name of the whole Brazilian nation, offers his profound sympathies to relatives and friends of the murdered citizen, as well as the other victims, and solidarity to the people and government of France,” it said.
Friends and relatives paid tribute to Silva, who had three children, on social media. “May god protect your soul up there in heaven,” one cousin wrote. “You were a woman so full of dreams and vitality.”
In a broadcast on Thursday night, Brazil’s far-right president called the killing an act of “Christianophobia”.
“She was there praying and this bloke who hates Christians came in. When we talk about Christianophobia this is what we mean … we have to fight this, and not with flowers,” Bolsonaro said, according to the Correio Braziliense newspaper.
Silva reportedly died in a restaurant in front of the basilica where she had taken shelter after running from the building with fatal injuries.
Radio France Internationale (RFI) reported that one of the last things she said before dying was: “Tell my kids I love them.”
The Brazilian newspaper O Globo said Silva was a trained chef and had been born and raised in Salvador, a city in north-eastern Brazil where the majority of citizens are of African descent. RFI said the victim had also worked as a cultural activist in Nice, helping to organise a festival paying tribute to the Afro-Brazilian sea godess Iemanjá.
Brazil’s foreign ministry said it was committed to eradicating the “scourge” of terrorism.
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