Police managed to rescue three other people inside the church in the small northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Brandet told reporters, and the two attackers were killed outside the church.
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Local media reported witnesses that said the men shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they came out of the building.
Police ultimately killed the two hostage takers, officials said.
President Hollande and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited to the scene to congratulate the security forces and comfort the community.
November 13, 2015 – Paris is rocked by multiple, near simultaneous gun-and-bomb attacks on entertainment sites around the city, in which 130 people die and 368 are wounded. “We will stand together”, he said.
The police shot the two radicals dead and are investigating to see if there were other accomplices involved in the attack.
June 14, 2016 – A Frenchman of Moroccan origin stabs a police commander to death outside his home in a Paris suburb and kills his partner, who also worked for the police.
Terrorism investigators have been summoned, he said. Another militant kills a policewoman the next day and takes hostages at a supermarket on January 9, killing four before police shoot him dead.
Five people were inside the church when it came under attack, interior ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet said.
French President Francois Hollande said the men who murdered 84-year-old Jacques Hamel pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).
If found to be true, the decision by IS to attack a church on French soil is a new way of instilling fear, and one that will likely further inflame public opinion.
ISIS claimed responsibility, saying the church attack was carried out by two of its “soldiers”, reported AP.
The two assailants entered a local church, slitting the throat of an 84-year-old priest and leaving another hostage with life-threatening injuries, before being killed by police as they left the building, police said.
At least one of the attackers appeared to be on a watch list, including being forced to wear an electronic bracelet to allow security officials to track his movements, said a police official cited by the Associated Press.
It was the latest in a wave of attacks in Europe inspired by the Islamist militant group based in Iraq and Syria that is on the defensive against a USA -led military coalition in which France is a major partner.
IS claims that the bomber was also acting on calls from IS “to target countries of the coalition that fights Islamic State”.
He said the attacker “went to Turkey and security services were alerted after this”.
In a statement from Krakow, Poland, where Pope Francis was visiting, Lebrun says “I cry out to God, with all men of good will”.
Karabila, who said he often coordinated open discussions with Hamel following ISIS attacks, said he is “appalled by the death of my friend”, and extends his prayers to Hamel’s family and the Catholic community.
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France has been concerned about the threat against churches ever since Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a 24-year-old Algerian IT student, was arrested in Paris in April last year on suspicion of killing a woman who was found shot dead in the passenger seat of her auto, and of planning an attack on a church.
