France Attacked
A familiar cry is heard in France as three are murdered in a church.
A familiar cry is heard in France as three are murdered in a church:
A man armed with a knife has killed three people – beheading one – in a terrorist attack at a French church in Nice …
And in a separate incident just hours later, police shot dead a man who was carrying a handgun and yelling “Allahu Akbar” in Avignon ...
The initial attack happened at 9am local time just as a mass was about to start at the Notre Dame church, the largest in the famous coastal French town.
An elderly female parishioner was decapitated in the attack and a male church warden reportedly had his throat slit ...
A third victim, a woman in her 40s, escaped after being stabbed but died of her injuries.
French president Emmanuel Macron attended the scene, denouncing it as an “Islamic terrorist attack”.
He’s the only European leader who uses accurate terms. Nice’s mayor is even more precise:
The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, said the man had said “Allahu Akbar” multiple times while he was being detained by police …
“Enough is enough … we have to remove this Islamo-fascism from our territory.”
A noble aim, but a massive task:
Reports also emerged of an Afghan national armed with a long knife was arrested in the southeastern French city of Lyon on Thursday as he was about to board a tram.
“He was carrying a 30-centimetre knife and seemed ready to take action,” Pierre Oliver, the mayor of Lyon’s Second Arrondissement, told AFP.
SBS reports, as usual:
It was not immediately clear what the motive was for the Nice attack …
It never is.
UPDATE. Killer identified:
A 21-year-old man who recently arrived in Europe from Tunisia is behind the sickening terror attack at a church in the French Riviera city of Nice.
Brahim Aouissaoui has been identified as the man who beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a bloody rampage at the Basilica of Notre-Dame …
He entered the church with a large knife and reportedly decapitated a 60-year-old woman whose dying words were, “Tell my children that I love them”.
Witnesses say the heard the attacker shout the words “Allahu akbar” in the moments after the attack …
Eric Ciotti, a Republican politician and member of the French National Assembly, tweeted: “Attack in Nice, attack in Avignon, attack on the French consulate in Saudi Arabia. It is not a coincidence, the Islamists want to annihilate us.”
UPDATE II:
The perfect encapsulation of Newyorktimesiness.
— Marsoon Trempley (@MTrempley) October 29, 2020
It almost literally reads like a joke.https://t.co/IjP7LeiCQv
UPDATE III. Peter FitzSimons:
This is tragic. Will have something to say on it in my column on Sunday.
He’s talking about koalas. Further from FitzSimons, a frequent visitor to France:
Sickening. Is anyone surprised?
He’s talking about horses.