The first picture has emerged of one of the three people killed during an Islamist attack in Nice – which saw two of the victims beheaded during a day of terror for France.
Vincent Loques, 45, a sacristan of the Notre Dame basilica in the city of Nice, was brutally killed as he prepared for the first Mass of the day after 21-year-old Tunisian migrant Brahim Aoussaoui attacked the church.
Aoussaoui is thought to have beheaded an elderly female parishioner who had come to to pray as the church opened before attacking Loques, then fatally stabbing a second woman who ran across the street before dying of her injuries. Armed police arrived 10 minutes later and shot Aoussaoui, before arresting him.
Elsewhere a security guard was stabbed and wounded outside the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, while two other men were arrested – one while carrying a knife near a church in Sartrouville after his father reported he was about to carry out a Nice-style attack, and another who tried to board a train in Lyon carrying a long blade.
It was thought that police had foiled another Islamist attack in the town of Avignon when an armed man was shot dead by officers after refusing to drop his weapon.
However, it later transpired the man was part of the far-Right, anti-Islam Identarian Movement, and had made a Nazi Salute. French media initially reported the man shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, which turned out to be incorrect.
The attacks come amid fury across the Islamic world at President Emmanuel Macron for defending satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, and on the day that Sunni Muslims mark the Prophet’s birthday.
It also comes less than two weeks after a schoolteacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded north of Paris for showing cartoons of the Prophet to his class in a lesson on free speech.
Mr Macron travelled to Nice following the attack and gave a speech shortly after 3pm, as church bells sounded across France to honour the dead. The President said it was ‘clear that France that is under attack… because of our values of freedom and our desire not to give in to terror’.
‘I say it with lots of clarity again today: we will not give any ground,’ he added.
The male victim has been identified locally as Vincent L, a 45-year-old father-of-two who worked as sacristan of the church, and was killed inside the building
Three people have died – two of whom were beheaded – after a knifeman attacked the Notre Dame basilica in Nice at 9am on Friday, before he was shot and arrested by police
An elderly woman who had come to the church early to pray was the first to be beheaded before a male church warden was also killed. A third woman was then stabbed multiple times, ran across the street, and died of her injuries…