Terrorist Attack On Church in Nice: Three Christians Killed

Country: France

Date of incident: October 29, 2020


Three Christians were murdered, two were practically beheaded and one stabbed to death inside the Notre Dame Basilica around 9 a.m in Nice on October 29th. The French police has arrested the attacker, who is a Tunisian man called A. Brahim. The victims were the 55-year-old caretaker, Vincent Loqués, a 60-year-old lady that was praying and a 44-year-old woman, mother of three small children. According to the police report, several other people were hurt. The elderly woman and the man were killed inside the Basilica, the younger woman was fatally stabbed, ran away and died in a bar in front of the Basilica.

The French Interior Minister Gérald Darmainin has announced that he will chair an emergency meeting. The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, told the media that the terrorist said "repeated endlessly 'Allahu Akbar' (Allah is the greatest) when he was being treated at the scene". Christian Estrosi calls this "Islamofascism".

The Prime Minister Jean Castex: "Without question this is a very serious new challenge that is striking our country."

"We are moved, very touched and in a kind of astonishment at this kind of unspeakable act. There is an urgent need to fight this gangrene that is terrorism, in the same way that there is an urgency to put in place in a concrete way a fraternity in our country" - Father Hugues de Woillemont, spokesperson for the CEF.

"We look with sadness, pain but also lucidity on what happened in Nice, we must stop this situation, but prevent violence from generating violence”. - Words by the rector of the Basilica, Olivier Spinosa.

The sacristan of Saint-André Cathedral in Bourdeaux, Roland Dubois, commented: “I have the whole cathedral to prepare... If we close, and we no longer welcome anyone, that will mean that we have been beaten." 

This happened following the anti-Islamist campaign of President Emmanuel Macron, after the recent beheading of a history teacher in Paris for showing the cartoons from the prophet Mohammed made by Charlie Hebdo. Just two weeks ago a similar Islamist attack occurred in Paris on October 16: The history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by Abouallakh Anzorov.

Nice has also been victim to other attacks. On July 14 in 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel murdered 86 people and injured 458 others running them over with a truck, whicle the crow expected the fireworks scheduled for the National Day.  A few days after that(July 26, 2016), in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Nice, two men, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean stabbed and slaughtered Father Jacques Hamel inside the religious building, injured a parishioner, and took three people hostage.

Source: i24news, BBC, Facebook, Bild, Le Monde, Le Monde 

Photo by i24news