France: Three Dead In Knife Attack In Nice

Three people have been killed and several others wounded after a knife attack near a church in the French city of Nice.

Mayor Christian Estrosi said on Twitter the knife attack had happened in or near the city’s Notre Dame church and that police had detained the attacker. He described the attack as terrorism.

The attacker kept shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) even after he had been arrested by police, Estrosi told reporters. 

One of the people killed inside the church was believed to be the church warden, Estrosi said, adding that a woman had tried to escape from inside the church and had fled into a bar opposite the 19th century neo-Gothic building.

“The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained, he is on his way to hospital, he is alive,” Estrosi said.

“Enough is enough,” Estrosi said. “It’s time now for France to exonerate itself from the laws of peace in order to definitively wipe out Islamo-fascism from our territory.”

Police armed with automatic weapons had put up a security cordon around the church, which is on Nice’s Jean Medecin avenue, the city’s main shopping thoroughfare. Ambulances and fire service vehicles were also at the scene.

The attack comes while France is still reeling from the fatal attack earlier this month of French middle school teacher Samuel Paty. The attacker, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, had said he wanted to punish Paty for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a civics lesson. Anzorov was shot dead by police shortly after the attack. 

Since Paty’s killing, French officials – backed by many ordinary citizens – have re-asserted the right to display the cartoons, and the images have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with the killed teacher.

That has prompted an outpouring of anger in parts of the Muslim world, with some governments accusing French leader Emmanuel Macron of pursuing an anti-Islam agenda.

In Paris, lawmakers in the National Assembly observed a minute’s silence in solidarity with the victims of Thursday’s attack.