The Islamic State has taken credit for the attack on a French Catholic Church where an 85-year-old priest conducting a Mass was forced to kneel before the church’s altar where one man slit his throat while a second videoed the horrific murder.
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Police have identified the man as Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean from a town in eastern France on the border with Germany, a judicial source told Reuters.
Police said they killed two hostage-takers in the attack in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, 125 kilometres (77 miles) north of Paris.
Haras Rafiq, managing director of the Quilliam Foundation counter-extremism think tank, said the Islamic State group (also known as IS, ISIS or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is speeding a “global jihadist insurgency”.
Security forces in France are now under scrutiny after it emerged Kermiche was under house arrest and wearing a tag, having twice tried to travel to Syria.
Kermiche and his accomplice took five hostages at the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray after bursting in during morning mass. One had three knives and a fake explosives belt, while the other carried a kitchen timer wrapped in aluminium foil and had fake explosives in his backpack, said Mr Molins.
French President Francois Hollande (second right) speaks with France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Prime Minister Manuel Valls after a meeting with the French President and representatives of religious communities. Father Jacques Hamel, a semi-retired assistant parish priest, had his throat slit in a church in northern France on July 26, 2016, after two men stormed the building and took hostages.
One of the nuns managed to escape and call police, who, upon arrival, tried to negotiate with the hostage-takers through a small door. “Be we Christians, Muslims, anything, we have to be together”.
Daniel Shoenfeld, an analyst with the Soufan Group security intelligence service, called the attack “a shot directly at Western Christianity”.
Certainly other ISIS attacks have been horrific, like the recent killing of more than 80 in Nice where a truck was used to intentionally run over people out enjoying a sidewalk stroll.
The other attacker is supposedly Abdel Malik P, but his identity is yet to be confirmed. Opposition politicians have responded to the attacks with strong criticism of the Socialist government’s security record, unlike previous year, when they made a show of unity after gunmen and bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November and attacked a satirical newspaper in January.
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.
Another resident, Said Aid Lahcen, had met the slain priest.
“The harmonious relationship that exists between our different religions in France constitutes an important resource for the cohesion of our society”, Paris Archibishop Andre Vingt-Trois said at the Elysee. Police said they had been looking for him for several days before the attack.
Afterward, he was under house arrest and made to wear an electronic tag allowing the police to trace him.
One attacker, Adel Kermiche, 19, had been flagged as a radicalized Islamist.
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The Nice attack, the third major strike on France in 18 months, had prompted a political spat over alleged security failings, and revelations over the church attack are likely to raise further questions.
