Kermiche was from Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, where the attack took place in north-west France.
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French officials on Thursday identified the second man responsible for attacking a Catholic church in Normandy as a 19-year-old who was spotted last month in Turkey as he supposedly headed to Syria – but returned to France instead.
French media have reported sources close to the investigation as saying anti-terrorism police had been searching for a man in the days before the attack who “strongly resembled” Petitjean, after receiving a tip-off from a foreign intelligence agency about an imminent attack.
Those who knew Kermiche in the Normandy town where he grew up said he appeared to think of little else other than trying to get to Syria to fight alongside extremist groups after the January 2015 attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
One of the two church attackers has already been named by police as 19-year-old Adel Kermiche. Wuithin short time, the two were identified as Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean.
ISIS’s Amaq news agency released the video and it showed the two men speaking Arabic and pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
During the siege they killed an elderly priest by slitting his throat and seriously injured another captive.
L’Express said French police suspected Petitjean’s identity but needed to wait for DNA testing through his mother because he died from a bullet in the face, making visual identification impossible.
On Wednesday, French President Francois Hollande met with religious leaders in an attempt to assuage fears and create interfaith solidarity after this latest in a string of terror attacks in France. The family alerted authorities to his radicalism to try to stop him from going to Syria, the friend said.
The scene was then secured by officers from France’s elite RAID unit, who found only fake explosive devices wrapped in tinfoil on the attackers.
The UCLAT flyer, obtained by The Associated Press, advised police its information came from a trusted source. The government has said there are about 10,500 people with so-called “S files” related to potential jihadi activities in France. “The date, the target and the modus operandi of these actions are for the moment unknown”.
Petitjean, from eastern France, had been on a radicals’ watch list.
It was the second major terrorist attack in France in less than two weeks after an Islamic State follower ploughed a lorry into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on 14 July in Nice, killing 84 people and injuring hundreds more.
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“The Intense emotion brought by this ignominious act won’t dry out, neither here, in Saint-Etienne du Rouvray, nor elsewhere”, said Hubert Wulfranc, the mayor of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray.
