Deadly knife attack kills three at French church
Saeed Pourreza
Press TV, London
Three people have been murdered in a knife attack by a 21-year old Tunisian man in the French city of Nice. The attack comes less than two weeks since the beheading of a teacher in France over satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s caricaturing of the Prophet Muhammad yet again.
The suspected terrorist attack happened at the Notre Dame church in the city of Nice. A knife-wielding attacker beheaded a woman and killed two other people. Police say several others have been injured. The assailant was shot by police and hospitalized:
Police armed with automatic weapons put up a security cordon around the church located on Nice’s main shopping thoroughfare. Ambulances and fire service vehicles arrived at the scene to help. The city’s mayor Christian Estrosi, visited the scene:
The response from the country’s Muslim leaders was immediate. The French Council of the Muslim Faith condemned the attack and expressed solidarity with the victims and their families.
Nice was the target of one of France's deadliest attacks in recent years, when a 31-year-old Tunisian drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on July 14 2016, killing 86 people.
Thursday’s attack comes less than two weeks since the beheading by a Chechen extremist of Samuel Paty, a teacher who showed the offensive Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed to his pupils in a school near Paris. That was followed by a knife attack on two Muslim women near the Eiffel Tower last week.
French President Emmanuel Macron is facing mounting criticism from the Muslim world for refusing to condemn the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and for cracking down on what he calls ‘radical Islam’. His stance has infuriated Muslims around the world and led to calls for a boycott of French products.
Iran, Turkey and several other Muslim majority countries have been the scene of angry protests against the French government over the past week or so. Iranian leaders warned Mr. Macron’s approach would only fuel extremism. The Turkish President, whose own cartoon has also appeared in Charlie Hebdo in recent days, has also been vocal:
France is home to nearly six million Muslims. The Samuel Paty murder had already heightened tensions in the country. And the French president’s defense of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in the name of free speech seems to have only added fuel to the fire.
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