French authorities increased security at churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship after the attacks in Paris past year, but ensuring constant, blanket security is hard in a country with a church in every town and village. One of the attackers had tried twice to leave for Syria; the second was not identified. Visiting the church, he said he had spoken to the family of the dead priest and also a parishioner who had been taken hostage.
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The nun described seeing the attackers film themselves and give a sermon in Arabic around the altar before she fled. One of the hostages was critically wounded.
The Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins, said the two attackers had knives and fake explosives – one a phony suicide belt covered in tin foil.
Kermiche was under house arrest and was forced to wear an electronic monitoring tag after he traveled overseas to try to fight in Syria, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. Those hours corresponded to the time of Tuesday’s attack. After the incident, Amaq news agency, which is affiliated to the Takfiri terrorist group, announced that two of its members had carried out the attack.
“What we are already doing is not enough; we have to find other solutions to avoid future youth doing this”, she said. “Muslim and non-Muslim”.
He said the killing of a priest – “who is respected and protected to the letter in our religion” – was “a deed outside of Islam, a deed that all Muslims of France condemn and reject in the most definitive way”. “This is what it looks like”, he said. Daesh claimed responsibility for both acts of terror.
Targeting a church in the rural Normandy heartland resonated with France’s leadership and Christians across Europe.
Two men armed with knives entered the centuries-old stone St-Etienne church in the working-class town during morning mass.
The slain priest had been at the church for the past decade and “was always ready to help”, said Rouen diocese official Philippe Maheut. “And he certainly didn’t think that consecrating his life would mean for him to die while celebrating Mass, which is a message of love”.
The pair, who IS has called its “soldiers”, also took three nuns and two churchgoers hostage in the building. “They forced him to his knees”. He wanted to defend himself.
The nun, Sister Danielle, told local radio RMC that the men were speaking Arabic and shouting, and had “recorded” the attack. “It’s revolting to watch them bickering!” she tweeted.
One person, a minor, was arrested in the investigation.
Sid Ahmen Ghlam, a 24 year-old Algerian student who was arrested and imprisoned after planning to attack places of Catholic worship in the Paris region had previously identified the same church as a potential target, Le Figaro reported.
French authorities are again trying to establish whether the Normandy attackers were part of a network after Islamic State claimed its “soldiers” were responsible.
Tuesday’s attack prompted renewed opposition calls to further harden France’s anti-terrorism legislation.
At the Vatican, a spokesman, the Reverand Federico Lombardi, said that Pope Francis was horrified at the “barbaric killing” of a priest.
The town’s mayor, Hubert Wulfranc, tearfully denounced the “barbarism. We will stand together”, Prime Minister Manuel Valls wrote on Twitter.
Elaine Ganley in Paris and Lori Hinnant in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray contributed.
Daesh is another name for the Islamic State group.
The violence appears unlikely to slow soon because IS reaps benefits even when attackers have no particular connection to the extremists fighting and losing territory in Iraq and Syria.
“ISIS seeks to recreate the same image that helped it attract thousands of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq and elsewhere”, said Michael Horowitz, an analyst with the Levantine Group security firm. “The pace of these attacks is aimed at painting ISIS as an omniscient group capable of humiliating the West, and defying expectations”.
The Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions said that the attack “marks a new stage in the spread of terrorism in France”.
“It’s a shot directly at Western Christianity”, said Daniel Shoenfeld, an analyst with the Soufan Group.
“A priest is a symbol of peace and fraternity, and he was an old priest, more than 50 years as a priest in France, so tonight we are sad and we are shocked by this”, the archbishop acknowledged. They must not win.
Last week, the French parliament extended the state of emergency for another six months.
Coming less than two weeks after the Bastille Day terror attack that left 84 people dead in Nice, France, the brutal slaying has fueled public anger and highlighted apparent shortcomings in the French government’s ability to respond to the domestic jihadist threat.
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French newspaper Le Figaro reported the church was suspected to have been on a list of Catholic places of worship in the area around Paris drawn up as possible targets by Sid Ahmed Ghlam, an Algerian student arrested previous year on suspicion of murdering a mother-of-one during a botched attempt to attack a church in Villejuif.
