Police named the terrorist as Tunisian Brahim Aouissaoui, 21. Police say Aouisaoui was born in Tunisia in 1999 and arrived in France as recently as Wednesday.
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said he travelled from Tunisia to the Sicilian city of Lampedusa on September 20. He was placed in coronavirus quarantine before being ordered to leave Italian territory. He travelled illegally to France on October 9 but did not make a bid for political asylum.
Three people have been killed in a terrorist stabbing attack in a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi spoke of a “terrorist attack at the heart of the Notre-Dame basilica” and of ‘’islamofacism.’’
The mayor told reporters that the attacker ‘’kept shouting Allahu Akbar even after being medicated’’, and that ‘’the meaning of his gesture is not in doubt.’’
The mayor told reporters that the suspect had “repeated endlessly ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest).’’
He said one of those killed was the caretaker at the basilica.
The attack began around 9am just as Mass at the Notre Dame basilica – the largest Roman Catholic church in Nice – was getting underway.
Police quickly swarmed the area, where they shot and arrested the attacker, who has been taken to hospital. A police source said it appears he was acting alone.
Police named the terrorist as Tunisian Brahim Aouissaoui, 21. Police say Aouisaoui was born in Tunisia in 1999 and arrived in France as recently as Wednesday.
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard says he travelled from Tunisia to the Italian city of Lampedusa on September 20. He was placed in coronavirus quarantine before being ordered to leave Italian territory. He travelled illegally to France on October 9 but did not make a bid for political asylum.
He reportedly arrived in Nice on Wednesday and was carrying an Italian Red Cross card.
He travelled by train — using the Red Cross identity document — and changed clothes at a train station in Nice before walking to the church early on Thursday morning where he began his attack.
Nice was the target of one of France’s deadliest attacks in recent years, when a 31-year-old Tunisian drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on 14 July 2016, killing 86 people.
Thursday’s attack is the latest to strike France, after a history school teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in another attack near Paris.
Paty was stabbed by an 18-year-old Chechen after he showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to his students during a lesson on free speech.
Parents of pupils at the school had led a campaign against him, before the attack took place. Seven have been arrested.
Just a few weeks earlier, an 18-year-old Pakistani stabbed a wounded two people outside the old offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The man has admitted to police that he was targeting the magazine for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.