French church attack

French church attackers pledged allegiance to ISIL, says Hollande

Two armed men who took hostages in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, were killed by police. 

By Cynthia Kroet

Two men who murdered an elderly priest after taking hostages at a church in northern France on Tuesday had claimed allegiance to Islamic State, French President François Hollande said.

Hollande was speaking in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen in Normandy after the attack, which took place less than two weeks after the Bastille Day massacre in Nice in which more than 80 people were killed.

The two men shouted “Allahu Akbar” when they came out of the church, French TV channel BFM reported.

The ISIL-linked Amaq news agency said “two soldiers of the Islamic State” had carried out the attack.

The armed men entered the church at 10 a.m. local time during Mass, taking the priest, Father Jacques Hamel, 84, and four other people — reportedly two nuns and two worshippers — hostage. According to local media, Father Hamel’s throat was cut.

The siege lasted around an hour. Police then surrounded the church and French TV said shots were fired. Both hostage-takers are now dead.

One of the hostages was said to be in a critical condition.

‘We will stand together’

Hollande called for “solidarity” after this “cowardly murder.”

“Terrorists want to divide us,” but French people “must know that they are under threat and that their strength comes from their cohesiveness,” the French president said.

The prime minister, Manuel Valls, said the “barbaric” attack was a blow to the Catholic community and the whole of France. “We will stand together,” he tweeted.

According to BFM TV, one of the attackers was known to French intelligence services. The channel said the man attempted to travel to Syria in 2015 but was stopped at the Turkish border and sent back to France.

In a statement, the Vatican said: “There is a new terrible news, which unfortunately adds to the violence that has occurred in recent days, creating immense pain and worry … We are particularly moved because this horrific violence took place in a church, a sacred place where the love of God is declared, with the barbaric killing of a priest and the involvement of the faithful.”

European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans wrote on Facebook that the “terrorist attack” showed “once again the barbarism of a nihilistic and murderous ideology which denies all our fundamental values, and which aims to make our freedoms disappear.”

The terrorists will fail, Timmermans wrote, because “our convictions are too strong, our solidarity unbreakable. A solidarity which is expressed by everyone across the European Union and indeed the world.”

France is on high alert since a man drove a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 84 people and injuring more than 300.

The Nice attack was the third major attack on France in 18 months. Two attacks in Germany claimed by ISIL since then have heightened tensions across Europe.

After the attack in Nice, France extended a state of emergency for another six months. The measure gives police extra powers to carry out searches and place people under house arrest.

Meanwhile, a doctor was shot dead in a Berlin hospital on Tuesday. According to reports, the gunman then turned the weapon on himself and died from his injuries.

The incident took place at Charité University’s Benjamin Franklin campus in the German capital.

Berlin police said there was no evidence to suggest the shooter had links to terror groups.