Two men stormed a church near Rouen in northern France, taking five people hostage – including two nuns – and killing a priest before being shot and killed by police Tuesday morning, law enforcement said. The spokeswoman spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. A nun who escaped said she saw the attackers video themselves and “give a sermon in Arabic” around the altar.
Advertisement
The assailants were shot and killed by police as they emerged from the church, according to authorities.
French President Francois Hollande, who is at the scene, said the attackers claimed to be members of the terror group and slammed what he described as a “vile terrorist attack”.
The Archbishop of Rouen identified the slain priest as Father Jacques Hamel and said he was 84, although others sources suggest he was born in 1930.
The hostage-taking comes on the back of a string of violent attacks across Europe in recent days, some claimed by the Sunni terror group ISIS, most notably an attack in the French city of Nice less than two weeks ago that left 84 dead.
“I cry out to God, with all men of good will”.
“The Catholic Church can take up no other weapons that prayer and fraternity between men”, he said in a statement.
The wounded hostage was treated at the scene, but had sustained serious injuries and was “between life and death”, he said.
Despite the protests of prosecutors, he was eventually released and ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device.
“We are put to the test yet again, Hollande said”.
Mohammed Karabila, head of the Regional Council of the Muslim Faith for Haute-Normandie, said French security services knew the name of one of the attackers. 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.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls condemned what he described as “a barbaric attack on a church”. France is also under a state of emergency and has extra police presence in the wake of the Nice attack in which a man barreled his truck down the city’s famed Promenade des Anglais, mowing down holiday crowds. It said the Pope had been informed of the attack and shared the pain and horror in response to the “absurd violence”.
The town mayor, Hubert Wulfranc, in tears, denounced the “barbarism” and, breaking down, pleaded, “Let us together be the last to cry”.
Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a 24-year-old Algerian IT student, was arrested in Paris on suspicion of killing a woman who was found shot dead in the passenger seat of her auto, and of planning an attack on a church. He is charged with killing a young woman inside her vehicle the same day.
The hostage-takers were reported to have been holding between four and six people at the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
Advertisement
At the Brussels airport and a nearby metro station, 32 were killed on March 22 when suicide attackers exploded themselves.
