Kermiche and a fellow attacker stormed the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of Rouen, during morning Mass.
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Eventually the three at the front door – two nuns and one parishioner – were pushed out of the church with the attackers behind them.
Enda Kenny says the killing of a priest by knife-wielding attackers in France’s Normandy region is especially very bad because “terror and murder have been visited upon innocent people at a time when they have been so physically vulnerable and so spiritually hopeful”.
As authorities looked for ways to prevent extremist attacks, gruesome details of the church attack trickled out.
The RAID special interven-tion force was searching for possible explosives in or around the church.
French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday sought to head off religious tensions and defuse criticism over security failings after jihadists killed an elderly Catholic priest in his church.
In an acknowledgement that the last two attacks occurred outside Paris, the minister announced a shift in the balance of the 10,000 soldiers already on the streets.
“Following recent events in France, we are reiterating our protective security advice to Christian places of worship and have circulated specific advice today”.
He described the pair as “these appalling cowardly people” and revealed police had tried to negotiate with them “but couldn’t get into the church because of the heavy locked door”.
Following the attack, religious leaders, including those from the Muslim community, have issued messages of sympathy and solidarity in the wake of the killing.
“This shocking crime reveals the lowness of its perpetrators and those behind them”, the UAE said, urging world countries to “work decisively and without hesitation to confront terrorism in all its forms”.
The Latest on the hostage-taking in the French region of Normandy.
The attack, claimed by IS militants, comes less than two weeks after Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a truck into a crowd in the Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people and injuring over 300. He identified one of the attackers as Adel Kermiche, a 19-year-old who grew up in the town and tried to travel to Syria twice last year using family members’ identity documents. Upon his release, he was electronically tagged and a curfew was placed on him meaning he could only leave his house. He was detained outside France, sent home, handed preliminary terrorism charges and wore a tracking bracelet that was turned off four hours a day.
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The identification of the second attacker was not known yet, the prosecutor said.
