France aims to ease religious tensions

French President Francois Hollande yesterday sought to head off religious tensions and defuse criticism over security failings after jihadists killed an elderly Catholic priest in his church.

Hollande met with top religious leaders as a violence-weary France mourned Tuesday's attack, which came less than two weeks after the Bastille Day truck massacre that killed 84 people in the southern city of Nice.

France's large Catholic community was in shock after two men stormed into a church in the northern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during morning mass and slit the 86-year-old priest's throat at the altar. Another man was left seriously injured in the attack.

Dalil Boubakeur, the head of France's Muslim community, voiced his "deep grief" at the attack which he described as a "blasphemous sacrilege which goes against all the teachings of our religion".

One of the attackers was identified as French jihadist Adel Kermiche, 19, who was awaiting trial on terror charges and had been fitted with an electronic tag despite calls from the prosecutor for him not to be released.

Residents of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray were struggling to come to terms with the bloodshed in their small town, so far from France's tourist hubs.

They made their way to a makeshift memorial to lay flowers, candles and messages of peace -- a ritual that has become chillingly familiar from Brussels and Paris to Nice and Munich, all cities that have been struck by attackers inspired by the Islamic State group.

Hollande also met his defence and security chiefs, who tried to find new ways to reassure a jittery population as his government comes under fire from the opposition over the repeated attacks, some nine months ahead of a presidential election.