Tell my children that I love them, the victim of the attack in France said before death

Pleasant:

French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged his country will stand firm against religious extremists after a man armed with a knife killed three people in a church, in the country’s second attack blamed on Islamist terrorism this month.

France “will not give up our values,” Macron said in Nice, after a Tunisian migrant went on a rampage for nearly half an hour with a 30 centimeter (12 inch) knife, targeting people praying in the southern city of Notre-Dame. Basilica.

A 60-year-old woman died inside the church and the body of a man, a 55-year-old church worker, was found nearby with his throat slit as well.

Another woman, a 44-year-old Brazilian woman who fled the church to a nearby restaurant, died shortly after from multiple knife wounds.

“Tell my children that I love them,” she managed to say before her death, according to French cable channel BFM TV.

The assailant, who was shot and wounded by police, was identified as Brahim Aouissaoui, 21, who arrived in Italy last month and then traveled to France, court sources said.

Aouissaoui, who had a copy of the Quran and three knives with him, shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is the greatest) when he was approached by the police who shot him and seriously injured him, French anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-François Ricard said at a press conference.

The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, told reporters at the scene that the attacker “repeated” Allahu Akbar “even while under treatment” while being taken to hospital.

The church murders come after the beheading on October 16 in a Paris suburb of history teacher Samuel Paty by an extremist after Paty showed students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a free speech lesson.

Macron has defended cartoons and the right to make fun of religion, sparking widespread anger against France in the Islamic world and several campaigns in majority Muslim countries to boycott French goods.

Police prevented a ‘higher toll’

Daniel Conilh, a 32-year-old waiter at the Grand Café de Lyon in Nice, a block from the church, said it was shortly before 9 a.m. when “shots were fired and everything the world is running away “.

“A woman came straight from the church and said, ‘Run, run, someone stabbed people,'” he told AFP.

French anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating charges relating to “terrorist murder”.

The police who shot Aouissaoui had “no doubt prevented an even higher toll,” said Attorney General Jean-François Ricard, adding that investigators found two unused knives in a bag at the scene.

The killings, which took place before the Catholic holy day of All Saints Sunday, prompted the government to raise the terrorist alert level to the maximum “emergency” level across the country.

France on alert

France has been on high alert since the January 2015 massacre in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo marked the start of a wave of jihadist attacks that left more than 250 dead.

Tensions have escalated since last month, when trial opened for 14 suspected accomplices in the attack.

The newspaper marked the start of legal proceedings by reposting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that infuriated millions of Muslims around the world – the same cartoons that Professor Samuel Paty used as lecture material.

Days after the trial opened, an 18-year-old Pakistani man seriously injured two people with a meat cleaver outside the former Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

In Nice, Macron announced increased surveillance of churches by the French Sentinel military patrols, which were to be increased to 7,000 versus 3,000.

Safety in schools would also be stepped up, he said.

But some argue that Macron unfairly targets the five to six million Muslims in France, Europe’s largest community.

Macron on Thursday urged people of all religions to unite and not “give in to the spirit of division”.

Painful memories

A Saudi citizen also injured a guard on Thursday in a knife attack at the French consulate in Jeddah as police in the French city of Lyon said they arrested an Afghan spotted carrying a knife as he attempted to climb up. aboard a tram.

In Nice, painful memories of a jihadist attack during the celebrations of July 14, 2016, when a man crashed into his truck in a crowded promenade, left 86 people dead.

Abdallah Zekri, director general of the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM) denounced Thursday’s attack and urged French Muslims to cancel the festivities to mark the Mawlid, or the prophet’s birthday, which end on Thursday, “in solidarity with the victims and their relatives “.

(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)