Lyon attack: France reeling after priest shot with sawn-off shotgun

Days following the attack in Nice, another French city is reeling after a priest was shot at point-blank range as he was closing his church.

France was further shaken by a new violent incident on Saturday, when an attacker armed with a sawn-off shotgun shot an Orthodox priest as he closed his church in the French city of Lyon before fleeing, a police source said.

The 52-year-old priest, who has Greek nationality, was shot in the liver point-blank range and taken to hospital in serious condition, sources said.

Police have arrested a man in connection with the attack, according to media in Lyon. The assailant had initially fled after the attack and residents were warned to avoid the area. The attacker’s motive remains unclear.

The assailant in the Lyon attack is still at large. (Photo by PHILIPPE DESMAZES / AFP)

France is on edge after the republication in early September of cartoons of the prophet by the Charlie Hebdo weekly, which was followed by an attack outside its former offices, the beheading of a teacher and an attack on a church in Nice Thursday that left three dead.

French authorities were on Saturday seeking to ascertain if a young Tunisian suspected of killing three people in a knife rampage inside a Nice church had outside help.

Brahim Issaoui, 21, only arrived in Europe from Tunisia last month.

Issaoui was shot by police multiple times and is currently in a grave condition in hospital. Investigators have been unable to question him and his precise motivations remain unclear.

“It is still too early to say if there were others complicit, what his motivations were in coming to France and when this idea took root in him,” said a source close to the inquiry who asked not to be named.

Mourners in Nice after the attack earlier this week Picture: Valery Hache / AFP

Macron sparked protests across the Muslim world after the murder earlier this month of teacher Samuel Paty — who had shown his class a cartoon of Mohammed — by saying France would never renounce its laws permitting blasphemous caricatures.

But in an apparent bid to reach out to Muslims, Macron gave a long interview setting out his vision to Qatar-based TV channel Al-Jazeera, seeking to strike a softer tone.

“I can understand that people could be shocked by the caricatures, but I will never accept that violence can be justified,” he said.

“I understand the feelings that this arouses, I respect them. But I want you to understand the role that I have. My role is to calm things down, as I am doing here, but at the same time it is to protect these rights.” He added: “I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said he won’t back down on the country’s right to free speech (Photo by Thibault Camus / AFP)

Macron lashed out at “distortions” from political leaders over the cartoons of the prophet, saying too often people were led to believe that they were a creation of the French state.

He slammed “a confusion that has been fed by many media -- and sometimes political and religious leaders -- which is to say that these caricatures are in a way the project or the creation of the French government or the president”.

He also denounced calls for a boycott of French goods, backed in particular by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and taken up by some retailers in Muslim countries, as “unworthy” and “unacceptable”.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments sparked protests in many Muslim countries (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)

He said the campaign was created by some private groups “who relied on lies... sometimes from other leaders” about the caricatures.

Even before the attack on Paty, Macron had promised a tough new campaign against Islamist radicalism in France, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of people since 2015.

Protests erupted Friday in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mali, Mauritania and Lebanon, the latest in a string of mass rallies denouncing France.