Two jihadists who attacked a French church and killed a priest pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, a video showed Wednesday, as investigators worked to identify the second assailant.
Advertisement
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Kermiche’s tag was deactivated for a few hours every morning, corresponding with the time of the attack.
Petitjean, thought to be aged 20 and like 19-year-old Kermiche on France’s terror watch list, was reportedly identified by an ID found at the scene of the attack.
Here’s a voice the media aren’t promoting: Sister Danielle, the nun who slipped out during the terrorist attack on a church in France on Tuesday.
Dramatic new video surfaced Wednesday showing heavily-armed police rushing a nun to safety moments before officers fatally shoot the ISIS jihadists who slaughtered a French priest in his church.
The Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins, said the two attackers had knives and fake explosives – one a phony suicide belt covered in tin foil.
France remains on high alert after Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 84 people and injuring over 300.
He added that a minor, believed to be a 16-year-old younger brother of somebody wanted by police for trying to go to Syria or Iraq in 2015, had been detained in connection with the investigation.
He also said more of the country’s 10,000-strong Operation Sentinel anti-terror forces would be deployed to areas outside Paris following the lorry attack in Nice and the killing in Normandy.
Hamel was born in 1930 in Darnetal, a town near Saint-Etienne du Rouvray and was ordained in 1958, according to information on the diocesan website.
Hollande, meanwhile, presided over a defense council and Cabinet meeting in Paris after speaking with Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish leaders.
Police managed to rescue three people from the church in the small northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Brandet said.
“He was still in his robes, he was at the foot of the altar; they forced him to kneel and then not to move”, she said.
It was the first known attack claimed by IS inside a church in the West.
Archbishop Martin said it is important to respect other religions.
The deputy chief of France’s police union, Mr Frederic Lagache, said that “it should not be possible for someone awaiting trial on charges of having links to terrorism to be released” on house arrest.
Young and old in the Normandy town were stunned by the attack.
“It’s going to be hard to admit it. we are scared.”, said Mulas Arbanu.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls has warned that the goal of the attack, claimed by Islamic State jihadists, was to “set the French people against each other, attack religion in order to start a war of religions”.
“We are confronted with a group, Daesh, which has declared war on us”, Hollande said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group. “(But) be we Christians, Muslims, anything, we have to be together”.
Advertisement
The priest they killed, Father Jacques Hamel was described by parishioners as “warm”, “simple”, and someone who lived “modestly”.
