An official in the prosecutor’s office said it was “very probable” that the man, identified as Abdel-Malik Nabil Petit Jean, was the same man pictured in a photo distributed to police services four days before the attack and obtained by The Associated Press.
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The attack is the third in two weeks in France and Germany in which jihadists have pledged allegiance to IS, increasing jitters in Europe over young, often unstable men being lured by the group’s propaganda and calls to carry out attacks on home turf.
A security official said Turkey spotted Petitjean at an airport going to Syria on June 10, and that on June 29 he was signaled to France and immediately put on a special watch list.
Sources say that after being gunned down by police, the second attacker’s face was too disfigured to allow him to be clearly identified.
Kermiche, also 19, was not only known to security services, he wore an electronic bracelet and was awaiting trial for alleged membership of a terrorist organisation having been released on bail.
Security fears meant a march for the Nice victims planned on Sunday, as well as another in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray due to be held on Thursday were cancelled.
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”.
French authorities Thursday identified a second man who stormed a church in Normandy and killed an 85-year-old priest as he celebrated Mass.
The priest, Father Jacques Hamel, 86, was brutally killed after the attackers carried out a “sermon” at the church’s altar.
The pair, who IS has called its “soldiers”, also took three nuns and two churchgoers hostage in the building.
In St.-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a town of about 27,000 people in France’s Normandy region, the reaction Wednesday was one of horror and disbelief.
Cazeneuve said France’s reservist forces would be boosted.
“The terrorists held me with a revolver at my neck”, she said, adding it was not clear to her now whether the weapon was real or fake.
President Francois Hollande, members of his government and opposition rivals gathered together on Wednesday at the symbolic Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris for a mass attended by Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders to pay tribute to the murdered priest.
“We deeply desire that our places of worship are the subject of greater (security) focus, a sustained focus”, said Dalil Boubakeur, the head of France’s Muslim community. “I love you. I miss you so much”. An elderly man among the five people in the congregation was seriously wounded by knife slashes.
Meanwhile, the French anti-terrorism coordinating agency UCLAT issued a photo of Petitjean July 22 to police warning that he “could be ready to participate in an attack on national territory”.
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He has called for the detention or electronic tagging of all suspected Islamist militants, even if they have committed no offence.
