The knifemen arrived during morning mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, northwest of Paris, where the 85-year-old parish priest Father Jacques Hamel was leading prayers.
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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.
“We must lead this war with all our means”, he said in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, where two attackers took hostages on Tuesday before being killed by police. It said the Pope shared the pain and horror in response to the “absurd violence”.
French lawmakers approved a six-month extension of emergency rule after the July 14 attack while the Socialist government also said it would step up strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
A statement posted to Telegram by the IS-linked Amaq news agency Tuesday claims that the assailants were “soldiers of the Islamic State”.
“We are confronted with a group, Daesh, which has declared war on us”, Hollande said, using an alternative name for IS. And it comes as an Islamic fundamentalist group claims responsibility for an explosion in Mogadishu, Somalia that killed UN Peacekeepers.
France is a major partner in the USA -led military coalition bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria.
The two men reportedly snuck into the church through a back entrance during a morning service and took the priest, two nuns and two parishioners hostage.
The identities of the attackers and motive for the attack are unclear, according to a security official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.
“French authorities increased security at churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship after attacks in Paris past year, but ensuring constant, blanket security is hard in a country with a church in every town and village”.
Hollande said he spoke to the family of the priest who was killed. There is always a difficulty looking at a religiously motivated attack, because is it religious, or is it an ideology, or is it something much more irrational?
Jacques Hamel, the 86-year-old Catholic priest slain in an ISIS attack in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France.
At the Brussels airport and a nearby metro station, 32 were killed on March 22 when suicide attackers exploded themselves.
Pascal Quilan, 53, who as a funeral director worked with the church the past 30 years, said he was in his office when he heard gunfire from police shooting at the attackers.
The Associated Press quoted a nun who witnessed the attack as saying the terrorists took video as “did a sort of sermon around the altar, in Arabic”.
The statement said the violence was particularly horrific as it had taken place in a church, “a sacred place where the love of God is announced”.
Dominique Lebrun, the archbishop of Rouen who was in Poland for a gathering of young Catholics, will be returning to France on Tuesday evening and will visit the church.
A French anti-terror prosecutor is opening an investigation.
At least one other person was injured, according to the Figaro Newspaper.
Earlier, French President Francois Hollande travelled to Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray and said the attackers had pledged allegiance to ISIS in what he called a “vile terrorist attack”.
“The people of France should know that they are under threat but they are not the only country, there is Germany and others, and that their strength lies in their solidarity”.
French President Francois Hollande and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve were heading to the town.
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Raid special intervention forces were searching the church and its perimeter for possible explosives and terrorism investigators were summoned.
