“He tried to struggle, he tried”, she told RMC radio. Two nuns were held hostage along with the couple and the priest.
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Hollande visited the Normandy town with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, meeting survivors of the church attack and members of the emergency services.
He also said more of the country’s 10,000-strong Operation Sentinel anti-terror forces would be deployed to areas outside Paris following the Nice attack and the killing in Normandy.
In an editorial, Le Monde newspaper recalled a key strategy of IS, to eradicate the so-called “grey zone” in which Muslims live peacefully alongside other religions, making it so uncomfortable for them to do so that they are forced to join ranks with the jihadists.
The Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, told journalists after the meeting at the Elysee Palace: “We can not allow ourselves to be dragged into the politics of Daesh (ISIS), which wants to set the children of the same family against each other”. He did not elaborate.
The priest “tried to fight. but, well, he is 86 years old”, she said, describing the attack as “cowardly”.
The pair took several hostages during the attack, including the two nuns and an 87-year-old man who was attending the church service with his wife, according to media reports.
“I mean Muslims everywhere, they follow the Quran, they follow the same faith”.
“But on one thing, I think, we are all absolutely clear, and that is the terrorists will not prevail”.
In the footage they appear to pledge allegiance to the terror group and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“They started talking instead of Jacques”.
The U.S. and its allies need to step up their efforts to root out ISIS activists and supporters. It was that kind of conversation.
One attacker, Adel Kermiche, had been flagged as a radicalized Islamist and was under house arrest at the time of the attack, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. “It could be an alarming sign of things to come”, the church leader told CT.
They allegedly forced the elderly man, identified only as Guy, to film the priest’s execution before stabbing him in the neck, arms and back. He sensed what was happening, he knew what was going to happen. The attackers even gave a sermon in Arabic, says the witness who is a nun and a survivor of the attack. “It’s horrific”, said Sister Danielle. “He [Father Hamel] was at the foot of the altar and they made him kneel down and not move”.
“We are confronted with a group, Daesh, which has declared war on us”, Hollande said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group.
The mosque in the French town where two radical Islamists slit the throat of a Catholic priest was opened on land donated by his church, it was revealed on Thursday.
And neighbours in the Franklin-Roosevelt district of Aix-les-Bains were as equally shocked as his mother last night that he had been named as the suspected second priest killer.
Two Islamic terrorists burst into a church during Mass in Normandy, France.
French investigators probing the church attack believe one of the assailants was a young man who was wanted by anti-terrorism police, sources said Wednesday.
The acting general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Revd Dr Hielke Wolters, said: “We convey our sympathies to the people of France and particularly to the community of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray for this latest eruption of violence”.
An 18-year-old neighbor said he had seen Kermiche just three days earlier in nearby Rouen wearing a long Islamic robe.
“We were saying that is not good”.
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Candles were set in front of the town hall, and stunned townsfolk were calling for the kind of unity Hollande is seeking.
