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France terror attack: Nice incident sees three dead, one woman beheaded at Basilica of Notre-Dame

Reuters
VideoSeveral people have been killed in a deadly terror attack in France.

A knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” has beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a suspected terrorist attack at a church in the French city of Nice, police and officials say.

Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, who described Thursday’s attack as terrorism, said on Twitter it had happened in or near the city’s Notre Dame church and that police had detained the attacker.

Estrosi said the attacker had shouted the phrase “Allahu Akbar”, or God is greatest.

One of the people killed inside the church was believed to be the church warden, Estrosi said.

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A man wielding a knife outside a church in the southern French city of Nice slit the throat of one person, leaving another dead and injured several others in an attack on Thursday morning, officials said. The suspected assailant was detained shortly afterwards, a police source said, while interior minister Gerald Darmanin said on Twitter that he had called a crisis meeting after the attack.
Camera IconA man wielding a knife outside a church in the southern French city of Nice slit the throat of one person, leaving another dead and injured several others in an attack on Thursday morning, officials said. The suspected assailant was detained shortly afterwards, a police source said, while interior minister Gerald Darmanin said on Twitter that he had called a crisis meeting after the attack. Credit: supplied

The attacker kept shouting “Allahu Akbar” even after he had been detained, Estrosi said.

“The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained, he is on his way to hospital, he is alive,” Estrosi told reporters.

“Enough is enough,” Estrosi said. “It’s time now for France to exonerate itself from the laws of peace in order to definitively wipe out Islamo-fascism from our territory.”

Police said three people were confirmed to have died in the attack and several were injured.

A police source said a woman was decapitated. French politician Marine Le Pen also spoke of a decapitation having occurred in the attack.

Police at the scene of a suspected terror attack in Nice, France, where at least three people have died.
Camera IconPolice at the scene of a suspected terror attack in Nice, France, where at least three people have died.

Estrosi said the victims had been killed in a “horrible way”.

“The methods match, without doubt, those used against the brave teacher in Conflans Sainte Honorine, Samuel Paty,” he said, referring to a French teacher beheaded earlier this month in an attack in a suburb of Paris.

Estrosi said a woman had tried to escape from inside the church and had fled into a bar opposite the building.

The French anti-terrorist prosecutor’s department said it had been asked to investigate the attack.

Reuters journalists at the scene said police armed with automatic weapons had put up a security cordon around the church, which is on Nice’s Jean Medecin Avenue, the city’s main shopping thoroughfare. Ambulances and fire service vehicles were also at the scene.

The attack comes while France is still reeling from the beheading earlier this month of French middle school teacher Paty by a man of Chechen origin.

The attacker had said he wanted to punish Paty for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a civics lesson.

It was not immediately clear if Thursday’s attack was connected to the cartoons, which Muslims consider to be blasphemous.

Since Paty’s killing, French officials - backed by many ordinary citizens - have re-asserted the right to display the cartoons, and the images have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with the killed teacher.

That has prompted an outpouring of anger in parts of the Muslim world, with some governments accusing French leader Emmanuel Macron of pursuing an anti-Islam agenda.

Within hours of the Nice attack, police killed a man who had threatened passersby with a handgun in Montfavet, near the southern French city of Avignon.

He was also heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” according to radio station Europe 1.

In Saudi Arabia on Thursday, state television reported that a Saudi man had been arrested in the city of Jeddah after attacking and injuring a guard at the French consulate.

The French Embassy said the consulate was subject to an “attack by knife which targeted a guard”, adding the guard was taken to hospital and his life was not in danger.

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