The standoff at about 9.25 a.m. Tuesday began when the attackers, both carrying bladed weapons, entered the church as morning Mass was underway, taking the priest, three nuns and two parishioners hostage, Molins said.
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Petitjean, whose face was disfigured after being shot dead by police, had been harder to identify than his accomplice, Adel Kermiche, also 19, and investigators confirmed his identity after a DNA match with his mother.
On Wednesday ISIS’ media wing, Amaq, posted a video on the Telegram messaging app that showed the two attackers pledging allegiance to the terror group.
Petitjean was born in St.-Dié-des-Vosges, in Lorraine in northeastern France, but grew up in Aix-les-Bains, in the southeast.
Residents of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray were struggling to come to terms with the bloodshed in their small town, so far from France’s tourist hubs.
This comes as the French government is under criticism over what is seen as security failures, following a series of terror attacks over the past months. The database of citizens considered a potential danger is used to maintain a lookout for militants returning from the war zone.
French officials identified the second man involved in the deadly attack on a Catholic Church in Normandy as Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean.
The left-leaning daily Liberation said it would continue to name and publish photos of attackers.
The UCLAT flyer, obtained by The Associated Press, advised police its information came from a trusted source. The security official said the source was a foreign partner, but did not name the country. It said the person in the photo “could already be present in France and act alone or with other individuals. The date, the target and the modus operandi of these actions are for the moment unknown”.
President Francois Hollande, members of his government and opposition rivals gathered together at the symbolic Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris for a mass attended by Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders to pay tribute to the murdered priest.
The priest “tried to fight… but, well, he is 86 years old”, she said, describing the attack as “cowardly”.
“France’s model of integration is generous in its principles but too rigid in its practice”, Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist who is an expert on the Muslim experience in French life, wrote in an analysis for The New York Times. An umbrella organization for Muslims, the French Council for the Muslim Faith, asked Muslims to visit churches Sunday “to express anew solidarity and compassion”.
“If terrorists strike us, it is because they know what France represents”, Hollande said after this month’s Bastille Day truck attack that killed 84 people on Nice’s crowded waterfront.
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They made their way to a makeshift memorial to lay flowers, candles and messages of peace – a ritual that has become chillingly familiar from Brussels and Paris to Nice and Munich, all cities that have been struck by attackers inspired by the Islamic State group.
