One of the nuns escaped and alerted the police, who arrived on the scene and tried to negotiate with the militants but the militants charged towards the police and were killed by them.
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Petitjean was identified through an ID found at Kermiche’s home, French media reported.
The incident comes at a time when France is still grieving a Bastille Day terror attack that left 84 dead amid efforts to contain radicalized Muslims within its borders.
DNA tests are being carried out on the second attacker to confirm his identity, judicial sources told Reuters.
The monitoring apparatus was a condition of his house arrest after two attempts in 2015 to travel overseas – at least once to Syria – using a relative’s identification, Molins said.
Residents of the small Normandy town near Rouen have been leaving flowers in tribute to the 86-year-old priest, Father Jacques Hamel who had his throat cut in the attack.
The terrorist who murdered a Catholic priest in northern France had told judges: “I am not an extremist” before being freed from prison to kill, it was revealed today.
A witness said congregants pleaded with the attackers to stop.
“If we abandon constitutional principles to protect that which we hold most dear – our liberty – we will be giving a victory to the terrorists”.
There have been at least 12 attacks of this kind in Europe in less than 2 years, Palmer reports, and most of the attackers has a history of petty crime.
Opposition Republican leader Nicolas Sarkozy accused Mr Hollande of “trembling” in the face of the jihadist threat.
“We can not allow ourselves to be dragged into the politics of Daech (Islamic State), which wants to set the children of the same family against each other”, the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, told journalists after the meeting at the Elysee presidential palace.
French authorities are again trying to establish whether the Normandy attackers were part of a network after Islamic State claimed its “soldiers” were responsible.
Kermiche’s companion has not yet been identified, according to Paris prosecutor François Molins, who spoke on Tuesday evening. He was apprehended in Turkey in May, before being sent back to Switzerland and then to France.
President Francois Hollande has vowed to wage war against IS “by every means” within the law following the attack in Saint-Etienne-du Rouvray on Tuesday. He told me two months ago, ‘I’m going to do a church.’ I didn’t believe him.
“Each time we said something to him he would answer with a verse from the Koran”, Redwan said.
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An 86-year-old worshipper is also in a serious condition in hospital after suffering knife wounds during the hour-long siege in which Fr Hamel, three nuns and two churchgoers were taken hostage.
