Tunisian migrant, 21, beheads woman & kills two others in Nice church terror attack before being shot 14 times by cops
AN Islamist terror suspect who beheaded a woman as he killed three Catholic church-goers in Nice has been pictured for the first time.
Brahim Aoussaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant, arrived in Europe just weeks before launching Thursday’s bloody attack, using a foot-long knife to butcher his victims.
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Three worshippers were killed in the rampage as the terrorist stormed the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice.
Sacristan Vincent Loquès, 54, had his throat slit as he prepared for the first Mass of the day, while one woman was found partially beheaded near the holy water font.
A mother fled the carnage inside the church and ran into a nearby cafe, where she died of her injuries after telling paramedics: “Tell my children that I love them”.
France’s state prosecutor revealed tonight the killer used a 12-inch blade to slaughter the three church-goers and is in hospital with serious injuries after being shot 14 times by armed cops as he screamed “Allahu Akbar”.
What we know so far:
- Three dead – one beheaded – in suspected terror attack at Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice, France
- Suspect has been named as Brahim Aoussaoui – reportedly a 21-year-old Tunisian
- The first victim has been named as Vincent Loquès, 54, the church warden
- Emmanuel Macron denounces violence as an “Islamic terror attack” and deploys 7,000 soldiers to the streets of France
- Knifeman doing a “Nazi salute” shot dead in Avignon after threatening police hours after attack in Nice
- Security guard stabbed by attacker at the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
- Fears of an attempted “copycat attack” after man with knife pulled over near church in Paris
- Man arrested with a 12-inch knife at a tram stop in Lyon
- France has provoked fury over its refusal to condemn cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by Charlie Hebdo
- Mass protests have been seen in many Muslim countries and calls for boycotts of French goods
- Incidents follow double stabbing in Paris near old Charlie Hebdo office in September 24 and the beheading of teacher Charles Paty on October 16
Aoussaoui, born in 1999, wasn’t known to the security services and arrived in Paris from Italy on October 9.
He had arrived at the Italian island of Lampedusa, where he was placed in virus quarantine, on September 20.
Armed cops who swooped on the church following Thursday’s murder spree found a bag with two more knives that the terrorist had armed himself with.
Separate suspects are understood to have launched attacks in Nice and Avignon as France was rocked by a day of violence.
Tonight, mourners gathered at Nice’s Notre Dame basilica to hold a candelit vigil in memory of the victims, as the Cannes Film Festival laid out a black carpet at its entrance.
FIRST VICTIM NAMED
The first victim in the Nice attack has since been named as Vincent Loquès, who is understood to have been the church warden.
Loquès, a dad-of-two, was the building’s 54-year-old sacristan, an officer charged with taking care of the church.
Parishioners paid tribute to him as a man who loved his church, saying “he helped, he served, he gave”, reports Nice-Matin.
He was said to be preparing the church for Sunday’s upcoming All Saint’s Day when he was attacked by the knifeman.
The body of a second victim, a 60-year-old woman, was found strangled and decapitated in the church.
A third victim, a 44-year-old woman, fled from the church at 8.54am but died in a cafe nearby from her wounds .
The suspect changed his clothes after arriving in Nice by train before arriving at the church at 8.29am before butchering the three church-goers over half an hour.
A team of four local police officers stormed the church through a side entrance and shot the terrorist as he yelled “Allahu Akbar”.
The attacker was taken to hospital with serious wounds and operated on as anti-terrorist police launched an investigation into the bloody rampage.
A photo of the suspect bleeding as he is treated by paramedics after being shot by police was tweeted by the head of the SITE Intelligence Group.
Meanwhile police confirmed a man doing a Nazi salute while brandishing a handgun was shot dead 160 miles away in Avignon.
Elsewhere, there have been at least three other incidents as French president Emmanuel Macron described his country as “under attack”.
It was reported a knifeman was caught near a church in Paris after telling his family he wanted to copy the attack in Nice, while another man was arrested while he was about to board a tram armed with a 12-inch knife.
Meanwhile, a security guard at the French Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was stabbed as anti-France sentiment rages across many Muslim nations.
‘THREAT LEVEL RAISED’
Macron denounced the Nice bloodbath as an “Islamic terror attack” and defiantly said the nation would not “give up on our values”.
The president announced up to 7,000 soldiers will be deployed to the streets across France in the wake of the violence to protect landmarks, schools and places of worships.
France has now raised its alert status to the highest possible level of “terror attack emergency”.
Eric Ciotti, a Republican politician and member of the French National Assembly, tweeted: “Attack in Nice, attack in Avignon, attack on the French consulate in Saudi Arabia.
“It is not a coincidence, the Islamists want to annihilate us! We must destroy the Islamists!!.”
One of the victims of the Nice attack – a woman aged 60 – was said to have been decapitated inside the church.
The second female victim managed to escape and took refuge in a nearby bar where she died from her injuries.
She reportedly said to the emergency services: “Tell my children that I love them.”
It is reported the church was preparing to open for mass when the knifeman attacked, sparking a swoop by armed police who shot and wounded him at around 9am local time.
Nice mayor Christian Estrosi said the attacker kept shouting “Allahu Akbar” even after he had been shot – and said it had all the hallmarks of a “terror attack“.
He said: “Enough is enough. 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.”
It comes amid heightened security fears in France due to an ongoing row over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
And the two attacks have also happened as Muslims celebrate the holy day Mawlid, which marks the birth of Mohammed.
Samuel Paty, 47, was beheaded by 18-year-old Abdullah Anzorov on October 17 after using the cartoons to teach his students about the importance of free speech.
Mayor Estrosi said the victims had been killed in a “horrible way” and added: “The methods match, without doubt, those used against the brave teacher”.
He also called for churches around France to be given extra protection or closed as a precaution.
Daniel Conilh, a 32-year-old waiter at the Grand Cafe de Lyon, a block from the church, said it was shortly before 9am when “shots were fired and everybody took off running.”
“A woman came in straight from the church and said, ‘Run, run, someone has been stabbing people’,” he told AFP
Another witness told Nice-Matin: “I saw a guy come out like crazy from the church, running.
“Within thirty seconds, between four and six city policemen chased.”
One local told BFMTV: “I was selling croissants when a man came in and said to me: ‘Monsieur, there’s a decapitated woman in the cathedral’.
“I didn’t believe him at first but he repeated it. I went to the cathedral and saw the municipal police and called to them. They came quickly.”
Terror in France
France has seen hundreds of people killed in terror attacks over the last five years.
- January 7, 2015 – Two gunmen break into satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo’s offices and killed 12 people.
- January 9, 2015 – Terrorist kills a policewoman before taking hostages at a supermarket – killing four before police shot him dead.
- November 13, 2015 – Paris rocked by multiple gun and bomb attacks which saw 130 people killed and 368 wounded.
- June 14, 2016 – Police commander and his partner stabbed to death outside his home in a Paris suburb.
- July 14, 2016 – Gunman drives a heavy truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people and injuring scores more.
- July 26, 2016 – Two attackers butcher a priest and seriously wound another hostage in a church in Normandy
- March 23, 2018 – Gunman kills three people in southwestern France after holding up a car, firing on police and taking hostages in a supermarket.
- October 3, 2019 – IT specialist with security clearance to work in the Paris police headquarter, kills three police officers and one civilian employee.
- September 24, 2020 – Two people stabbed and wounded in Paris near the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo
- October 16, 2020 – School teacher Samuel Paty beheaded on the street of a Paris suburb after showing his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression.
- October 29, 2020 – Three people killed, including a woman being beheaded, at the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice
France is experiencing a new wave of terror attacks, and President Macron has pledged to take a tough line on Islamic extremism.
Nice previously suffered at the hands of terrorists in July 2016, when 86 people were killed in the city when a terrorist rammed a 19-tonne cargo truck through crowds on Bastille Day.
And today’s bloodshed is a chilling echo of the murder of 85-year-old priest Jacques Hamel, who had his throat slit by two extremists at his church in Normandy also in July 2016.
The fresh outbreak of violence has seen both the murder of Paty and the stabbing of two people outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
The French anti-terrorist prosecutor’s department said it had been asked to investigate the attack.
It said the attacker is suspected of assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise and criminal terrorist association.
Explosions were heard as the bomb squad detonated suspicious items found inside the church.
Macron visited the scene earlier today Mayor Estrosi, while France’s National Assembly observed a minute’s silence in solidarity with the victims.
Prime Minister Jean Castex said the government’s response will be “relentless and immediate”.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted: “I am appalled to hear the news from Nice this morning of a barbaric attack at the Notre-Dame Basilica.
“Our thoughts are with the victims and their families, and the UK stands steadfastly with France against terror and intolerance.”
US President Donald Trump said: “Our hearts are with the people of France. America stands with our oldest Ally in this fight.
“These Radical Islamic terrorist attacks must stop immediately. No country, France or otherwise can long put up with it.”
UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab added: “The UK stands with France today in sorrow, shock and solidarity at the horrifying events in Nice.
“Our thoughts are with the victims and their families and we offer every support to the French people in pursuing those responsible for this appalling attack.”
Italian leader Giuseppe Conte also condemned the “vile attack”- and said it “will not shake the common front defending the values of freedom and peace.”
He added: “Our convictions are stronger than fanaticism, hatred and terror.”
In a statement, a representative of the French Council for the Muslim Faith said: “As a sign of mourning and solidarity with the victims and their loved ones, I call on all Muslims in France to cancel all the celebrations of the holiday of Mawlid.”
Irans foreign minister also strongly condemned the deadly knife attack in southern France and called it a terrorist attack.
Javad Zarif said in a tweet this evening: “We strongly condemn today’s terrorist attack in #Nice. This escalating vicious cycle — hate speech, provocations & violence — must be replaced by reason & sanity.”
Zarif added: “We should recognize that radicalism only breeds more radicalism, and peace cannot be achieved with ugly provocations.”
Pope Francis prayed for the victims of an attack by a knifeman in a Nice church Thursday, as the Vatican said “terrorism and violence can never be accepted”.
Churches across France sounded death knells, the traditional bell tollings to mark a death at 3pm.
The killings occurred just ahead of the Catholic holy day of All Saints Day on Sunday.
France has provoked the ire of nations such as Iran and Turkey as it has taken a tough line in defending the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
History teacher Paty was was posthumously given the Legion d’Honneur – France’s highest award – and Macron insisted the country would “not give up our cartoons”.
Prophet Mohammed cartoons have been displayed in France in solidarity with Paty to defend what many in the country see as its values of free speech and secularism.
Macron has said he would redouble efforts to stop conservative Islamic beliefs subverting French values – which has angered many Muslims.
France has launched a crackdown on what it perceives to be radical Islam, announcing it has searched more than 120 homes and closed down a mosque in Pantin.
Paty is being seen as a champion of free speech by many in France after his brutal death – inspiring the defiant phrase “Je Suis Prof”.
The image he showed to students was the same one published by Charlie Hebdo that sparked the attack on the magazine’s offices that killed 12.
Nine people – including members of the attacker’s family – have been arrested over his death.
His killing came after the knife attack near the former offices of Charlie Hebdo just weeks prior – in which the suspect is believed to have tried to target the magazine.
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Just yesterday, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani warned the row over the cartoons could lead to “violence and bloodshed”.
He said: “It’s a surprise that this would come from those claiming culture and democracy, that they would somehow, even if unintentionally, encourage violence and bloodshed.”
Rouhani added: “Westerners must understand the great Prophet of Islam is loved by all Muslims and freedom-lovers of the world.
“Insulting the Prophet is insulting all Muslims. Insulting the Prophet is insulting all prophets, human values, and amounts to undermining ethic.”