France meets Friday a defense council the day after the jihadist attack which left three dead in a church in Nice (south) and aroused a huge wave of emotion in the country and abroad.
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Early Thursday, a man armed with a knife killed three people in a few minutes in the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption church in Nice. The victims are two women, one in her sixties and one in her forties of Brazilian nationality, and the sacristan of the basilica, a 55-year-old man.
The alleged perpetrator of the fatal stab wounds against a man and two women is a 21-year-old Tunisian who arrived in France on October 9 after landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa on September 20, Jean-François Ricard said Thursday evening, the anti-terrorism prosecutor in charge of the investigation.
Tunisia, which strongly condemned the attack, also announced the opening of an investigation.
After being neutralized by a team of the municipal police of Nice, the assailant advanced towards the police “threateningly shouting Allah Akbar (God is the greatest in Arabic), forcing them to shoot. “, According to the prosecutor.
Wounded by bullets, he is currently hospitalized and his vital prognosis remained engaged Thursday evening according to the anti-terrorism prosecution.
Near the alleged perpetrator, investigators found a Koran, two phones and the murder weapon, “a 30cm knife with a 17cm blade” according to the prosecutor.
President Emmanuel Macron, who quickly went there, denounced an “Islamist terrorist attack”, immediately announced a strengthening of the Vigipirate security plan: the number of soldiers patrolling the streets will drop from 3,000 to 5,000.
A defense council will take place on Friday morning, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced.
“If we are attacked, it is for the values which are ours, our taste for freedom”, estimated Emmanuel Macron, also evoking the knife attack of a security guard of the French consulate in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, at the same time or almost.
“In France, there is only one community. It is the national community. I want to say to all our fellow citizens, whatever their religion, whether they believe or that they do not believe, that we must, in these moments, unite and not give in to the spirit of division ”, a- he launched.
The Nice attack occurred nearly two weeks after the assassination of a college professor in the Paris region, targeted for showing caricatures of Mohammed in a class on freedom of expression. His beheading by an 18-year-old Chechen Russian Islamist shocked the country.
Mr Macron has since promised that France will not give up on these designs. His statements have provoked a crisis with the Muslim world, where protests and calls for a boycott of French products are increasing.
” Barbarity “
The national daily press published on Friday echoed the strong emotion raised by this new attack.
“Nice: Islamist barbarism is unleashed against France”, headlines the conservative daily Le Figaro. “The spiral of terror” for its part displays its left-wing colleague Liberation, and simply “Hold” for the Catholic daily La Croix.
As of Thursday, the leaders of the 27 EU member states condemned the knife attack in Nice “in the strongest terms”, showing their “solidarity” with France.
“We call on the leaders of the whole world to work for dialogue and understanding between communities and religions rather than division,” they pleaded.
US presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump also denounced the attack on a country “allied” to the United States.
Several Muslim countries including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran “strongly” condemned the attack. Tunisia for its part expressed its “solidarity with the government and the French people”.
As for the Vatican, he made it known that “terrorism and violence can never be accepted”. “It is a moment of pain in a time of confusion,” said his spokesperson Matteo Bruni, adding that Pope Francis “prays for the victims and their loved ones”.
In France, the president of the Conference of Bishops Eric de Moulins-Beaufort recalled that this is the “second attack committed in a church” in the country after the assassination of a priest in July 2016 by jihadists.
“What is dreadful is that this attack was aimed at very ordinary parishioners who came to pray very quietly”, victims “of an ideology which is spreading, a kind of pathology which claims to be Islamism”, a- he said.
The attack came to shake up the debate then taking place in Parliament on the re-containment just decided by the government in order to fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
It has led several leaders of the right and the far right to adopt a warlike tone and for some to launch calls to “annihilate the enemy”.