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An 86-year-old priest had his throat slit by two knifemen who cut his throat after bursting into a French church and taking nuns and worshippers hostage before being shot dead by police. The Islamic State has claimed the responsibility for the attack, saying two 'soldiers' from the group carried it out.
Five people, including the priest, two nuns and two parishioners were held by the assailants who raided the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen in Normandy on Tuesday.
The clergyman, named as Jacques Hamel, is believed to have been beheaded during the attack while another hostage is ‘hovering between life and death’ in hospital.
France’s interior ministry spokesman said the church was surrounded by France’s anti-gang brigade the BRI, which specialises in kidnappings, and that ‘the two assailants came out and were killed by police’.
Three of the hostages were freed unharmed, and another was fighting for their life, he said.
The building is being searched for possible explosives.
Pope Francis has expressed his ‘pain and horror’ at the incident with a spokesman saying the Pontiff was appalled by the ‘barbaric killing’ because it happened in a sacred place.
Anti-terrorist judges immediately opened an investigation in to Tuesday’s attack, as President Francois Hollande and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve attended the scene.
Hollande appealed for ‘unity’ in France, where political blame trading has poisoned the aftermath of the truck attack, the third major strike in the country in 18 months.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted that he was ‘horrified at the barbaric attack’ adding: “All France and all Catholics are bruised”.
France is currently on high alert after an attack in Nice on Bastille Day July 14 that killed 84 people and a string of deadly attacks last year claimed by the Islamic State group that killed 147 others. France is also under a state of emergency and has extra police presence in the wake of the Nice attack in which a man barrelled his truck down the city’s famed Promenade des Anglais, mowing down holiday crowds.