France raises attack alert after knifeman kills three at church

A man wielding a knife and screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ has killed three people, including one whose throat was slit, at a church in Nice.

French members of the elite tactical police unit RAID enter to search the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice after the knife attack. Picture: AFP

France has raised its terror alert to the highest level following the brutal killing of three people inside a Nice church on the Côte d’Azure.

Amid escalating tensions between France and the Muslim world, the scene at the Notre Dame Basilica overnight (AEDT) was described by police as “a vision of horror”.

A 21-year-old Tunisian migrant, Brahim Aoussaoui, rampaged inside the church, screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he beheaded a 70-year-old parishioner and then fatally stabbed a 45-year-old church warden Vincent Loques. According to French reports, Aoussaoui arrived in Europe just a few weeks ago.

Vincent Loques was killed. Picture: Supplied

A third victim, a woman aged about 40, was also stabbed inside the church but fled to an adjacent cafe where she died of her injuries. Her heartbreaking last words were later made public.

“‘Tell my children that I love them,’ The last words of the lady slaughtered this morning in #Nice, just before passing away. Immense emotion in front of this abominable attack. Support for the families of the victims and all the inhabitants of Nice, a martyred city,” French diplomat Joëlle Garriaud-Maylam tweeted.

Within two hours of this attack, the French embassy in Saudi Arabia announced a person had stabbed a security guard outside the French consulate in Jeddah.

Also on Thursday, police arrested an Afghani man known to the French intelligence services near a train station in Lyon. He was armed with a 30cm knife and “seemed ready to take action”, local police reported.

While in Avignon, police shot dead a man who was a member of a far-right group “Generation Identitaire” and had threatened a North African shopkeeper.

Authorities believe the church attacker, Aoussaoui, had only arrived in France several weeks ago from the Italian island Lampedusa, a staging post in the North African migrant route into Europe.

A woman cries in the streets after the knife attack in Nice, southern France, on Thursday. Picture: AFP

French president Emmanuel Macon travelled to Nice and said he was immediately doubling the numbers of military guarding churches and schools.

“It is very clearly France that is attacked — at the same time we had a French consular site attacked in Saudi Arabia, in Jeddah, at the same time arrests were being made on our territory,’’ he said.

“If we have been attacked once again, it is because of our values, our taste for freedom; the freedom to believe freely and not give in to any terror. We will give in to nothing. Today we have increased our security to deal with the terrorist threat.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was briefed on the attack and contacted Mr Macron on Thursday night to express Australia’s solidarity with France.

“Sadly this terrible and disgraceful and disgusting attack ... is just the most cowardly and vicious act of barbarism by terrorists,” Mr Morrison told Sydney’s 2GB.

No Australians were caught up in the horror.

The French public has been horrified at the spate of murders this month and how its fiercely protected national values including freedom of expression, have been criticised by prominent leaders.

The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, said: “Enough is enough … we have to remove this Islamo-fascism from our territory.” He said the “Islamo-fascist” assailant didn’t stop shouting Allahu Akbar even when he was shot by police and arrested.

He added: “No doubt this was a terror attack”.

France has been under heightened fears of an attack since the October 16 murder of Samuel Paty, a geography teacher decapitated by a Chechen extremist outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, north of Paris after showing pupils Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed during a class on freedom of expression.

Fourteen accomplices involved in the 2015 terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine which killed 12, and the associated attack on a Jewish supermarket where five people died, have been on trial over the past few months.

A relative of a victim of the knife attack cries in front of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice in Nice. Picture: AFP

President Macron said his country was involved in an “existential” battle against Islamist fundamentalism, which has prompted angry responses from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and most recently, a Bahraini immam.

On October 2, Mr Macron introduced a new law to monitor the funding of mosques and Islamic communities and investigate how clerics obtain positions in France, which prompted Mr Erdogan to claim Mr Macron needed mental treatment. Muslim countries opposed to France’s stance have begun to boycott French products.

Over the past few days there have been angry Turkish retorts to another Charlie Hebdo caricature which depicted Mr Erdogan drinking beer in his underwear, and lifting a woman’s hijab to expose her bare backside.

Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan’s spokesman, tweeted: “We strongly condemn the publication of the French magazine, which has no respect for any faith, sacred and value, about our President.”

Yesterday Mr Erdogan’s communications chief Fahrettin Altun said Islam could be used in the name of terrorism.

“We condemn unconditionally the most recent terror attack in Nice, France. Such senseless violence has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims,” Mr Altun said.

“We call on the French leadership to avoid further inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims and focus, instead, on finding the perpetrators of this and other acts of violence. Sensible parties in France must work on building bridges to prevent the creation of a hostile environment.’’

French soldiers and police in Nice after the attack. Picture: AFP

Four days ago France’s police chief, Frédéric Veaux, announced increased security around churches, mosques and other religious sites for the celebrations of All Saints Day on November 1, where the French honour dead relatives. He said al-Qaida had reiterated a call to attack France, with a risk of attack by knives and vehicles.

Nice was the scene of one of the most horrific terror attacks on Bastille Day in 2016 when a Tunisian Islamic State terrorist drove a 19-tonne truck into the crowds lining Promenade des Anglais, killing 86 and injuring 458, including several Australians.

A later tweet by Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi said: “Nice has paid too heavy a price in the same way as our country in recent years. I call for the unity of the Niçois. Our country can no longer be satisfied with the laws of peace to annihilate Islamo-fascism.”

Four years ago two Islamists wearing fake explosive belts and knives took six people captive inside the Catholic Church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy, in northern France and then slit the throat of the priest, 85-year-old priest Jacques Hamel.

Yesterday Mr Macron referred to Father Hamel in his support of the Catholic Church.

“I want to express, first and foremost, the nation’s support for the Catholics of France and elsewhere,” Mr Macron said.

“After 2016, with the killing of Father Hamel, it is the Catholics of our country attacked once more, and just before All Saints Day. We are at their side in order that religion can be freely exercised in our country. People can believe or not believe, all religions can be practised, but today the nation is beside our Catholic compatriots.’’