Police managed to rescue the only three other people inside the church in the small northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, he told reporters. The attackers were later killed.
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He said the attacker “went to Turkey and security services were alerted after this”.
The broadcaster added that the arrested attacker was released on March 2 but was ordered by a court to wear an electronic tracking device.
Daesh is a radical Sunni group notorious for its human rights abuses, which has claimed responsibility for a number of major terrorist attacks staged in different parts of the world. The jihadist group is outlawed in a number of countries, including Russian Federation.
Hollande called it a “vile terrorist attack” and said it’s another more sign that France is at war with IS, which has claimed a string of attacks on France. The anti-terrorism division of the Paris prosecutor’s office immediately opened an investigation.
An 84-year-old priest was killed and one of his parishioners critically injured after two men armed with knives burst into a French church during a service on Wednesday and took several people hostage in an ISIS-related attack.
A second hostage, whose name has also not been disclosed, is now in critical condition.
Later, a local Muslim leader told the AP that one of the attackers was on French police radar and had traveled to Turkey.
The attack sent shock waves through a nation already reeling from the murder of 84 people in Nice on July 14, when a Tunisian national drove a lorry into crowds enjoying Bastille Day fireworks, as well as earlier atrocities directed at rock fans and sports crowds and the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.
The town mayor, Hubert Wulfranc, in tears, denounced the “barbarism” and pleaded, “Let us together be the last to cry”.
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 vehicle, and of planning an attack on a church. “We will stand together”, he wrote on Twitter.
As President Hollande arrived in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, the Amaq news agency which is linked to the militant group said that two of its “soldiers” had carried out the attack.
Anti-terrorism prosecutors will now have to determine whether the two attackers were followers of Islamic State or copycat extremists.
This version corrects the name of the town to Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
Pope Francis condemned the attack on the church in the strongest terms.
Eulalie Garcia, a woman who works in a local beauty parlor near the church, stated that she had known the priest, whose name has not been disclosed as of writing, since she was a child.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls branded the attack “barbaric” and said it was a blow to all Catholics and the whole of France.
Lombardi called the attack “more bad news, that adds to a series of violence in these days that have left us upset, creating enormous pain and worry”.
The archbishop of the nearby city of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, named him as 84-year-old Jacques Hamel.
He said the pope has expressed “pain and horror for this absurd violence, with the strongest condemnation for every form of hatred and prayer for those affected”.
At a press conference in Downing Street, Prime Minister Theresa May offered “my condolences to the French people following the sickening attack in Northern France this morning”, adding: “Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected”.
One of the hostages was seriously wounded, and is “between life and death”, French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters.
The assailants were “neutralised” by police as they came out of the church reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar”.
The RAID special intervention force was searching for possible explosives in or around the church. And I invite all non-believers to unite with this cry.
French authorities increased security at churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship after the attacks in Paris past year, but ensuring constant, blanket security is hard in a country with a church in every town and village.
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According to media reports, the two men shouted out the word “Daesh” upon entering the church.
