While three people were killed Thursday, October 29 in a knife attack at the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice, President Emmanuel Macron, who has promised that France will not give up on its values, is due to participate in a council meeting on Friday morning. defense.
The Government has just brought the Vigipirate plan to the level of an emergency attack throughout the country.
The President of the Republic convened tomorrow morning a Defense and National Security Council.
- Jean Castex (@JeanCASTEX) October 29, 2020
The Head of State, who quickly went to Nice on Thursday and denounced an "Islamist terrorist attack", decided to strengthen the Vigipirate security plan by placing it at the "emergency bombing" level throughout the country .
The number of soldiers patrolling the streets is to increase from 3,000 to 5,000.
"If we are attacked, it is for the values which are ours, our taste for freedom", estimated the President of the Republic, also evoking the attack with the knife of a security guard of the French consulate in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, at or around the same time.
"In France, there is only one community. It is the national community. I want to say to all our fellow citizens, whatever their religion, whether they believe or that they do not believe, that we must , in these moments, unite us and do not give in to the spirit of division, "he said.
It is France which is under attack.
I have therefore decided that our soldiers will be more mobilized in the coming hours.
As part of Operation Sentinel, we will go from 3,000 to 7,000 soldiers.
- Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) October 29, 2020
Three victims in minutes
A man armed with a knife killed three people in a few minutes at the Notre-Dame de l'Assomption basilica in Nice.
The victims are two women, one in her sixties and one in her forties of Brazilian nationality, and the sacristan of the church, a 55-year-old man.
The alleged perpetrator of the fatal stab wounds is a 21-year-old Tunisian who arrived in France on October 9 after disembarking on the Italian island of Lampedusa on September 20, Jean-François Ricard, the anti-terrorism prosecutor in charge of 'investigation.
Tunisia, which strongly condemned the attack, also announced the opening of an investigation.
After being neutralized by a team of the Nice municipal police, the assailant advanced towards the police "in a threatening manner, shouting Allah Akbar ('God is the greatest', in Arabic). binding to shoot, "according to the prosecutor.
Wounded by bullets, he is currently hospitalized and his vital prognosis remained engaged Thursday evening according to the anti-terrorism prosecution.
Near the alleged perpetrator, investigators found a Koran, two phones and the murder weapon, "a 30cm knife with a 17cm blade" according to the prosecutor.
This attack occurred nearly two weeks after the assassination of a college professor in the Paris region, targeted for showing caricatures of Muhammad in a class on freedom of expression.
His beheading by an 18-year-old Chechen Russian Islamist shocked France.
Emmanuel Macron has since promised that France will not give up these drawings.
His statements have caused a crisis with the Muslim world, where demonstrations and calls for a boycott of French products are increasing.
Outrage in the world
The leaders of the 27 EU member states on Thursday condemned "in the strongest terms" the knife attack in Nice, showing their "solidarity" with France.
"We call on leaders around the world to work for dialogue and understanding between communities and religions rather than division," they pleaded.
US presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump also denounced the attack on a country "allied" to the United States.
Joint statement by the members of the European Council on the terrorist attacks in France: https://t.co/4jFcSsi1oz#EUCO #Nice pic.twitter.com/vPg1Ofc5UB
- Charles Michel (@eucopresident) October 29, 2020
Several Muslim countries including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran "strongly" condemned the attack.
Tunisia for its part expressed its "solidarity with the government and the French people".
As for the Vatican, he made it known that "terrorism and violence can never be accepted".
"It is a moment of pain in a period of confusion," said Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, adding that Pope Francis "is praying for the victims and their loved ones".
In France, the president of the Bishops' Conference, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, recalled that this is the "second attack committed in a church" in the country, after the assassination of a priest in July 2016 by jihadists.
"What is dreadful is that this attack targeted quite ordinary parishioners who came to pray very quietly", victims "of an ideology that is spreading, a kind of pathology which claims to be Islamism", he said.
With AFP
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