'IS men' kill priest at French church
A priest in his mid-80s was killed with a knife and another hostage seriously wounded yesterday in an attack on a church in northern France carried out by assailants linked to Islamic State.
Both attackers were shot dead by French police. Five people in all had been taken hostage. A police source said it appeared that the priest had had his throat slit.
President Francois Hollande said the two men who stormed the church before killing the elderly Catholic priest had claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Shortly afterwards the IS-linked Amaq news agency, citing a "security source", said the perpetrators were "soldiers of the Islamic State who carried out the attack in response to calls to target countries of the Crusader coalition".
The two attackers stormed the church during morning mass, taking the five people inside hostage, including the priest, interior ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet said.
He said the church was surrounded by polite from the elite BRI unit, which specialises in kidnappings, and that "the two assailants came out and were killed by police".
Bomb squad officers aided by sniffer dogs scoured the church for any possible explosives, reports Reuters.
The archbishop of the nearby city of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, named him as 84-year-old Jacques Hamel, although the website of the archdiocese states he was born in 1930.
Three of the hostages were freed unharmed, and another was fighting for their life, said Brandet.
HOLLANDE URGES UNITY
France remains on high alert after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian national, ploughed a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on July 14, killing 84 people and injuring over 300.
Hollande appealed for "unity" in France, where political blame-trading has poisoned the aftermath of the truck attack, the third major strike in the country in 18 months.
"The threat remains very high," said Hollande. "We are confronted with a group, Daesh, which has declared war on us," Hollande said, using an alternative name for IS.
"We have to wage war by every means, (but through) upholding the law, which is because we are a democracy."
The Paris prosecutor's office said the case was being handled by anti-terrorism prosecutors, reports AFP.
Pope Francis voiced his "pain and horror" at the "barbaric killing" of the priest.
France has been a prime target of IS, which regularly calls for supporters to launch attacks against the country, a member of the international coalition carrying out air strikes against the jihadist group in Iraq and Syria.
Attacks in Belgium in March, and in Germany this week, have also increased jitters across Europe.
After Nice, France extended a state of emergency giving police extra powers to carry out searches and place people under house arrest for another six months until January.
FEARS OVER CHURCH ATTACKS
Valls had warned earlier this week that France will face more attacks as it struggles to handle extremists returning from jihad in the Middle East and those radicalised at home by devouring propaganda on the internet.
France has been concerned about the threat against churches ever since Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a 24-year-old Algerian IT student, was arrested in Paris in April last year on suspicion of killing a woman who was found shot dead in her car, and of planning an attack on a church.
Prosecutors say they found documents about al-Qaeda and IS at his home. As part of beefed up security operations in France, some 700 schools and Jewish synagogues and 1,000 mosques are under military protection.
However with some 45,000 Catholic churches, and thousands more Protestant and evangelical churches, protecting all places of worship is a massive headache for security services.
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