– A French security official says police have killed two attackers who used knives to seize hostages in a church near the Normandy city of Rouen.
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Islamic State extremists have urged followers to attack French churches and the group is believed to have planned at least one church attack earlier.
French policemen search house-by-house in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray after attackers killed a priest at a church in the village.
The incident comes as France is under high alert after an attack in Nice two weeks ago that killed 84 people and a string of deadly attacks past year claimed by Islamic State.
“We talked about religion and how to live together”. Both sources suggested the known attacker had been monitored by authorities for some time.
In August 2015, the Islamic State devastated an ancient Christian monastery, the Mar Elian monastery, in central Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Vatican condemned the “barbarous killing”, saying Pope Francis was horrified by the news.
Anti-terrorism investigators have been summoned in the case, Brandet said. The terrorists, who forced Hamel to kneel before they slaughtered him, were later killed by police marksmen.
Hollande and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve rushed to the town, which lies in north-central France about 75 miles northwest of Paris. Seven French monks from the monastery at Tibherine, Algeria, were beheaded, probably by the Armed Islamic Group, in the spring of 1996. “We must fight this war by all means, while respecting the rule of law – what makes us a democracy”.
The government has said it will step up airstrikes against IS targets in Syria and Iraq in response to recent terrorist attacks.
The attack will heap yet more pressure on President Francois Hollande to regain control of national security, with France already under a state of emergency 10 months ahead of a presidential election.
Hollande expressed support for all France’s Catholics but said the attack targets “all the French”.
“I cry out to God, with all men of good will. And I invite all non-believers to unite with this cry”, Archbishop Dominique Lebrun wrote, according to the AP.
Two attackers took hostages inside a French church during morning Mass on Tuesday near the city of Rouen, killing an 86-year-old priest by slitting his throat before being shot and killed by police, French officials said. Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a statement the attack hits particularly hard “because this horrific violence took place in a church, a sacred place in which the love of God is announced, and the barbaric murder of a priest”.
Police managed to rescue three people from the church in the small northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Brandet said.
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Brandet, speaking on BFM TV, said personnel were searching the church and the surrounding area for possible explosives.
