3 Dead In Church Attack: What Happened in Nice at the Notre Dame Basilica?

According to sources in the investigation, the perpetrator of the knife attack is a 21-year-old Tunisian who would have arrived in France through Lampedusa at the beginning of October. Macron visits the Notre Dame Basilica, conveys “the support of the entire nation to Catholics” and defends that the country “will not give in” to the “Islamist madness.”

A terrorist attack has taken place inside the Notre Dame Basilica, in the heart of Nice. Around 9 in the morning, an individual armed with a knife entered the church and killed three people, two women, and a man.

At least one of the victims, one of the women, has been beheaded. The deceased male could be the sacristan of the basilica. Two of the dead perished inside the temple. The third, in a nearby bar where he had sought refuge after being wounded.

The author was arrested by the municipal police not far from the scene at 9:10. He has been seriously injured. The mayor of the city, Christian Estrosi, has reported that “he kept shouting in Arabic ‘Allah is great’ while he was being treated by the doctors who transferred him to the hospital.”

According to sources close to the investigation collected by AFP, the attacker would be a 21-year-old Tunisian who would have arrived in Europe from the Italian island of Lampedusa. The young man, according to a “local source close to the file”, is called Brahim Aoussaoui . He had arrived in Lampedusa at the end of September, where he had been quarantined by Italian authorities, before being subject to an obligation to leave Italian territory and be released, it added. I was in France since the beginning of October.

The authorities did not hesitate to classify it from the beginning of terrorism. In fact, the Prosecutor’s Office has opened its investigation under the charges of “murder” and “association of criminals and terrorists.”

Several media recall recent threats from a branch of Al Qaeda in relation to the controversy of the Muhammad cartoons. Police sources confirm that the police had ordered to reinforce the surveillance of the churches during All Saints. However, there was no police protection in the Nice Basilica.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that he has raised the level of terrorist alert throughout the country after the attack. Before the National Assembly, Castex considered the attack “ignoble, barbarous and abject” and promised a “firm, implacable and immediate” response. The prime minister announced an extraordinary Defense Council for tomorrow, Friday.

The National Assembly has observed a minute of silence. On the rostrum, the prime minister defended the confinement announced last night by President Emmanuel Macron. After his speech, Castex has left the hemicycle to join the open crisis cell in the Interior Ministry.

Notre Dame Basilica is near the Promenade des Anglais, Nice’s seafront, where a suicide attack killed 86 people in 2016 as crowds watched the fireworks on July 14.

The mayor attributed the attack to “Islamofascism. ” “Thirteen days after Samuel Paty, our country can no longer be satisfied with the peace laws to annihilate Islamofascism,” the councilor said on Twitter.

French President Emmanuel Macron called this morning’s attack and announced a greater military device to protect the country.

The French president has transferred from the scene of the events “the support of the entire nation to the Catholics. ” He reiterates that France “will not give in” to the Islamist threat, as it did after the attack that killed Professor Samuel Paty.

“We will not give up anything,” Macron said in a statement in which he announced that the military security device will increase from 3,000 to 7,000 soldiers in the country.

This increase will make it possible to protect places of worship during the upcoming All Saints holiday and schools for the return of the autumn holidays, which will take place from next week, said the French president.

Macron called a Defense Council for tomorrow in which, he assured, more measures will be taken, while promising to “protect” citizens and “respond” with “firmness and unity” to the attack, the third that the country has suffered in a month.

Macron assured that France is in the crosshairs of “Islamist madness” for its values, “its taste for freedom, for allowing everyone to freely believe without giving in to terror.”

The president sent a message of unity in response to the terrorist threat and asked that at these critical moments “do not give in to divisions.” The attack takes place a few days before the All Saints holiday, but also when the Muslim community celebrates Mawalid, the commemoration of the birth of the prophet Muhammad.

8h50 grand déploiement des forces de l'ordre à #NotreDame à #Nice. Des coups de feu entendus. pic.twitter.com/SiuOhAeRG8

— Ivan Blanco (@ivanblancovilar) October 29, 2020

ATTACK ON THE FRENCH CONSULATE IN YEDA

The Saudi security forces detained a citizen on Thursday who attacked a security guard at the French consulate in the city of Jeddah, in western Saudi Arabia, with a sharp object, who was slightly injured, the official SPA agency reported. the EFE agency.

The Mecca province police “arrested a citizen who attacked a security guard at the French consulate with a sharp object and was slightly injured,” according to SPA, which did not provide further details.

This attack comes amid a wave of convictions against the use and defense of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad after the murder of a teacher who used them for one of his classes at a high school.

A MAN DOWN IN AVIGNON

A 33-year-old man who threatened passers-by on a street in Avignon, in southeastern France with a gun, was killed by police, an incident in which local authorities dismissed the Islamist trail.

“We moved away from the Islamist track. The man had a psychiatric follow-up and spoke incoherent words,” the Avignon prosecutor’s office told AFP.

Police sources cited by “La Provence” indicated that the man, who was carrying a pistol, has died and there are no injuries. The prefecture (government delegation) told Efe that the police intervened shortly before 11 a.m. and that the prosecutor had traveled to the scene of the events, in the Montfavet neighborhood. An official investigation has been opened.

ARRESTED IN LYON WITH A 30 CM KNIFE.

A man of Afghan origin was arrested this morning in the center of the French city of Lyon with a 12-inch knife as he was about to enter a tram, the prefecture Police reported.

The man was arrested while raising the knife at the time he entered the tram and remains in police premises while the progress of the investigation, which the Prosecutor’s Office has already taken over.

According to the BFM TV network, the detainee today is a man born in Afghanistan in 1994, with psychiatric problems and who told the agents that he had heard voices that ordered him to kill.