France raises threat level to highest after knifeman kills 3

French police officers entering the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice yesterday, in this still image taken from a video. The attacker, who has been identified as a 21-year-old Tunisian, murdered three people at the church, beheading at least one of them
French police officers entering the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice yesterday, in this still image taken from a video. The attacker, who has been identified as a 21-year-old Tunisian, murdered three people at the church, beheading at least one of them. PHOTO: REUTERS
French President Emmanuel Macron visiting the site of the attack yesterday. He vowed that "France will not give up on our values" as he urged people of all religions to unite and not "give in to the spirit of division". PHOTO: REUTERS French security
French security forces guarding the area after a knife attack at the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice yesterday. PHOTO: REUTERS
French President Emmanuel Macron visiting the site of the attack yesterday. He vowed that "France will not give up on our values" as he urged people of all religions to unite and not "give in to the spirit of division". PHOTO: REUTERS French security
French President Emmanuel Macron visiting the site of the attack yesterday. He vowed that "France will not give up on our values" as he urged people of all religions to unite and not "give in to the spirit of division". PHOTO: REUTERS

PARIS • France raised the security alert for French territory to the highest level yesterday after a knifeman murdered three people at a church, beheading at least one of them in what was described as a terror attack in the city of Nice.

Prime Minister Jean Castex, who made the announcement in Parliament, called the attack "as cowardly as it is barbaric".

President Emmanuel Macron, who visited the site of the attack, vowed that "France will not give up on our values" as he urged people of all religions to unite and not "give in to the spirit of division".

Meanwhile, French police arrested a man armed with a long knife in the south-eastern city of Lyon yesterday as he was about to board a tram.

The suspect, an Afghan national in his 20s who was dressed in traditional Afghan clothes, "seemed ready to take action", said Mr Pierre Oliver, the mayor of Lyon's Second Arrondissement.

In Montfavet, near the city of Avignon, police said they shot dead a man who had earlier threatened passers-by with a handgun.

According to French radio station Europe 1, the man had shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest).

Similarly, the Nice assailant had repeatedly shouted "Allahu Akbar even while under medication" after he was injured during his arrest, the city's mayor Christian Estrosi said.

The Nice attacker has been identified as Brahim Aoussaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian who arrived in Europe late last month.

A man and a woman died at the Basilica of Notre-Dame, in the heart of the Mediterranean resort city, while a third person died from injuries after seeking refuge in a nearby bar, a police source told Agence France-Presse.

The dead man was the church's sacristan, who had opened the doors at about 8.30am. The first mass of the day was not due to start for another two hours.

But soon after the 45-year-old started work, a man armed with a knife entered the church and slit his throat, beheaded an elderly woman and badly wounded another woman, police said.

French anti-terror prosecutors have opened an inquiry into what Mr Estrosi called an "Islamo-fascist attack".

The attack comes while France is still reeling from the beheading earlier this month of French middle school teacher Samuel Paty in Paris by a man of Chechen origin.

Mr Paty's attacker had said he wanted to punish him for showing pupils cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in a civics lesson.

President Macron and his colleagues - backed by many ordinary citizens - have defended the right to display the cartoons, which Muslims view as blasphemous.

At a memorial service for Mr Paty on Oct 21, Mr Macron said that France would not give up the caricatures, and pledged to tackle extreme Islamism in the country, which outraged many Muslim-majority countries, with some governments accusing Mr Macron of pursuing an anti-Islam agenda.

Protests have erupted in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iraq, Gaza and Turkey.

In Saudi Arabia, a Saudi citizen wounded a guard in a knife attack at the French consulate in Jeddah yesterday. "The assailant was apprehended by Saudi security forces immediately after the attack. The guard was taken to hospital, and his life is not in danger," the French Embassy in Riyadh said in a statement.

Malaysia has said it strongly condemned "provocative acts" that would defame Islam, while Indonesia's Vice-President Ma'ruf Amin has decried Mr Macron's comments that "generalise Muslims".

But European governments have come out in support of France, with leaders from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands publicly expressing their solidarity with Mr Macron.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

  • Major knife attacks in France since 2017

  • 2020

    • Oct 29: A man bursts into a church in the southern city of Nice, killing three people and injuring several others before being shot and arrested by police. The same day, police shoot and kill a man in Montfavet, near the city of Avignon in southern France, after he had earlier threatened passers-by with a handgun.

    • Oct 16: A teacher is decapitated near a school on the outskirts of Paris. The assailant is shot dead by police. Prosecutors say they are treating the incident as "a murder linked to a terrorist organisation". Police say the victim had recently shown caricatures of Prophet Muhammad in class.

    • Sept 25: A man armed with a knife seriously wounds two people in a suspected terror attack outside the former offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, three weeks into the trial of men accused of being accomplices in the 2015 massacre of the newspaper's staff.

    • April 4: In the south-eastern riverside town of Romans-sur-Isere, a 33-year-old Sudanese refugee goes on a stabbing spree in broad daylight, killing two people. After the rampage, the assailant is arrested without a fight and prosecutors launch an investigation into "murder linked to a terrorist enterprise" and "association with terrorist wrongdoers".

    • Jan 4: A knife-wielding man runs amok in a park south of Paris, killing a man walking with his wife and wounding two other people before being shot dead by police. Anti-terror investigators take over the investigation following evidence that 22-year-old Nathan C. had recently converted to Islam.

    2019

    • Oct 3: Mickael Harpon, a 45-year-old computer expert in the Paris police intelligence-gathering department, uses a kitchen knife and an oyster shucker to kill four colleagues. His 30-minute rampage ends when an officer shoots him dead. It emerges that Harpon had converted to Islam about 10 years ago and had connections in the ultra-conservative Salafist movement.

    2018

    • May 12: Khamzat Azimov, 20, a naturalised Frenchman of Chechen origin, stabs to death a 29-year-old man in Paris' busy Opera district before being shot dead by police. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terror group claims responsibility.

    2017

    • Oct 1: A 29-year-old Tunisian kills two young women with a knife at the main train station in the southern city of Marseille. He is shot dead by soldiers, and ISIS claims responsibility for his attack.

    AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 30, 2020, with the headline France raises threat level to highest after knifeman kills 3. Subscribe