Paris: An attacker armed with a knife beheaded a woman and killed two other people at a church on Thursday in the Mediterranean city of Nice in France.
A knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a suspected terrorist attack at a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday, police and officials said.
Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, who described the 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.
In Nice, the neighborhood locked down and surrounded by police and emergency vehicles. Sounds of explosions could be heard as sappers exploded suspicious objects.
The lower house of parliament held a moment of silence Thursday for the victims. The prime minister rushed from the hall to a crisis center overseeing the aftermath of the Nice attack. French President Emmanuel Macron was headed to Nice later in the day.
The attack has come at a time when France is still coming to terms with the beheading earlier this month of French middle school teacher Samuel Paty by a man of Chechen origin.
The attacker had killed Paty as a ‘punishment’ for showing school children cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad during a class lesson. Showing cartoons of the Prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam.
The motive behind the Nice attack was not immediately clear. It could also not be said if the Prophet cartoons were a trigger for today’s attack.