MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-10-29 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Islamic War on the West perks up again
|
https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-people-killed-in-knife-attack-at-church-in-french-city-of-nice-11603963626?mod=hp_lead_pos10
Suspected Terrorist Knife Attack in Nice, France, Leaves Three Dead
Noemie Bisserbe, Sam Schechner and Joshua Robinson
8-10 minutes
NICE, France—A knife-wielding man killed three people—nearly
decapitating one of them—in the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice, police
said, in an assault being treated as an act of terrorism.
Surveillance footage showed the attacker entered the towering basilica
before 9 a.m. and spent some 25 minutes inside before a 44-year-old
woman fled the building with multiple stab wounds, said Jean-François
Ricard, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor. She died moments later.
Local police, alerted by passersby, slipped in the door and encountered
the alleged attacker, who shouted “Allahu akbar” before being shot and
detained, Mr. Ricard said. Inside the church, police found a 60-year old
woman whose throat had been deeply cut in what one official described as
“an apparent effort to decapitate her.” A 55-year-old man who served as
the church’s sacristan also had his throat cut. Police found a knife
with a seven-inch blade, two telephones and a copy of the Quran.
Mr. Ricard said the alleged attacker appears to be a Tunisian man born
in 1999 who illegally entered the European Union through the Italian
island of Lampedusa on Sept. 20, and made it to mainland Italy in early
October. He underwent surgery for his wounds Thursday and remains in
critical condition, Mr. Ricard added.
The attack—the third France has endured in just over a month—escalates
the confrontation between radical Islam and a French government
determined to defend freedom of expression as well as the country’s
strict divide between state and religion. It also came as the country
prepared to enter a national lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of
Covid-19.
“If we’re under attack again, it’s for our values, for our taste for
liberty,” French President Emmanuel Macron said after arriving in Nice.
“I want to say to all citizens, whether they practice a religion or not,
that we are one.”
France’s Interior Ministry on Sunday had warned in a memo to police
around the country that a group affiliated with al Qaeda had over the
weekend called for “individual jihad” on French soil. The memo, reviewed
by The Wall Street Journal, added that the terrorist group cited
churches as a possible target and urged attackers to ram vehicles into
crowds or use knives.
Near the entrance of the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice following the knife
attack.
sebastien nogier/EPA/Shutterstock
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•••••
The appeal from al Qaeda came, the ministry said, in response to Mr.
Macron’s broader push to combat “Islamic separatism.” Mr. Macron has
proposed a law making it easier for the government to shut down Islamic
associations the government deems radical.
On Thursday, the French government said it would double down on its
measures. “The government’s response will be firm, unyielding and
immediate,” French Prime Minister Jean Castex said before lawmakers in
parliament on Thursday.
Mr. Macron raised the entire country’s terrorism-alert system to “attack
emergency,” the highest level, and said he would deploy 4,000 additional
counterterrorism soldiers to patrol streets and protect churches and
schools, bringing the total to 7,000. Church bells across France tolled
in memory of the victims.
By nightfall, the atmosphere had grown tense in Nice. A group, mostly
men, marched toward the church. They shouted “This is our home,” a
far-right slogan in France, and performed Roman salutes. They also held
French flags and sang France’s national anthem with their fists in the air.
Police surrounded the group, which placed a wreath on the church’s steps
before observing a minute of silence.
Dozens of other people left small candles and a red rose on a small
concrete block in front of the church.
“No matter what, I will keep going to church. No one will stop me,” said
Samia Monier, 59, a Nice resident who lighted a candle. She knew one of
the victims, the sacristan. “He was a very nice man, he always had a
kind word for everyone,” she said.
Satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has long been a target of Islamist
terrorists because of its repeated publication of caricatures mocking
the Prophet Muhammad. Several attacks led by groups of Islamist
terrorists killed hundreds in France in 2015 and 2016, including an
assault on the publication’s newsroom that scarred France’s national psyche.
The magazine again became a flashpoint in September, when two people
were seriously wounded in a knife attack near its former office
following its republication of some caricatures. Just a few weeks later,
a middle-school teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded in a suburb of the
French capital after he showed Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of Muhammad to
his students during a class discussion.
French people—including many Muslims—condemned the attack and expressed
support for the country’s vision of free expression. But Turkey and
other Muslim countries, where representations of the prophet are
regarded as blasphemy, reacted angrily. Several religious leaders
announced plans to boycott French products. Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said over the weekend that Mr. Macron needed
mental-health treatment, a comment the Élysée Palace said was unacceptable.
Al Qaeda’s call for attacks against France appears to have been heeded
overseas. Police in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, arrested a Saudi national for
allegedly attacking a security guard Thursday at the French consulate in
Jeddah with a sharp object, local authorities said on Twitter. The guard
was hospitalized with minor injuries, the Mecca government said, without
providing more details.
A man prays in the street outside the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice on
Thursday.
Photo: Daniel Cole/Associated Press
The French Embassy in Riyadh urged its nationals present in Saudi Arabia
to exercise extreme caution.
Also on Thursday morning, a man armed with a knife was shot dead by
police in the southern French city of Avignon after threatening
passersby in the street. French authorities didn’t immediately connect
the incident to Nice, and a police source said it was probably not an
Islamist attack.
France is still coming to terms with its recent history with terrorism.
Last month, a French court opened a trial of alleged accomplices in the
attack on Charlie Hebdo and a deadly assault days later on a kosher
grocery store.
Nice was among the hardest hit in the wave of attacks that began about
half a decade ago. On Bastille Day in 2016, 84 people died when a man
drove a large refrigerated truck along the seafront walkway where
thousands were gathered to watch fireworks.
French churches have been the targets of terrorist attacks in the past.
In 2016, two men murdered an 85-year-old priest in a church in Normandy.
A few months later, a group of women were caught attempting to light
cooking-gas canisters on fire outside Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.
Both groups had been in touch with an Islamic State handler via internet
chat apps.
—Benoit Faucon in London contributed to this article.
Write to Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe-at-wsj.com, Sam Schechner at
sam.schechner-at-wsj.com and Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson-at-wsj.com
--
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