The identity of the second man involved in the killing of a priest in northern France on Tuesday has been revealed as Abdel Malik Petitjean, aged 19.
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The knifemen arrived during morning mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a working-class town near Rouen, northwest of Paris, where Father Jacques Hamel had been celebrating mass. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the other hostages were used as human shields to block police from entering.
One of the hostages, who had come to the church to hear mass, was forced to film the butchery on a phone camera before being stabbed in the neck, arms, and back in front of the altar. As they came out of the church hiding behind three hostages and shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is Greatest”), they were shot and killed by police.
The terrorists were armed with knives and fake explosives, including a mock suicide belt made of tin foil, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Kermiche was rapidly identified as he had been under house arrest, and was wearing a monitoring bracelet, after being arrested in Turkey for trying to reach Syria.
A police official told The Associated Press that the bracelet was deactivated during those four hours, allowing Kermiche to leave the family home without raising alarms. However no direct link has been found. She also said that in order to stay alive, her husband played dead after the attackers had injured him.
He warned that it could “radicalize people from both sides of the communities”. According to investigators, that period perfectly matched the time of the attack on the church and the killing of the priest.
“We’ve been talking about the danger of the global jihadist insurgency”.
France was already in a state of shock less than two weeks after the Nice truck attack.
Every year, the Vatican’s Agenzia Fides, which tracks the work of Catholic missionaries around the world, releases a grim list of how many of its own have been killed while serving the church.
He argues that even when a detainee is released and made to wear a tag, there is little response from authorities in cases of non-compliance. “The simple fact is they are vulnerable and I’m not sure really that there is anything to do about it”, said Ivereigh.
She said the attackers filmed themselves. Police and local officials say the country is struggling to hire and train forces fast enough.
The pope condemned the attack in the strongest terms.
The town’s mayor, Hubert Wulfranc, tearfully denounced the “barbarism”.
“What happened in France had happened in other countries before, and actually we see Christians laying down their lives in the interests of their faith”, said Dumas.
In the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, young and old were stunned by the attack.
Hassan Tarchich, a former resident of Moroccan descent, returned Tuesday night to pay his respects, laying flowers and a candle outside the slain priest’s home. “He was a man of peace”.
The Islamic State group’s French-language magazine Dar al Islam outlined that strategy early past year under the headline “May Allah curse France”.
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And as more details emerge of the background of the Syrian asylum seeker, Mohammad Daleel, who blew himself up Sunday in Ansbach, injuring more than a dozen people, criticism is turning into anger.
