France is reeling from a string of attacks feared to be terror-related, with a woman beheaded and two others killed in Nice, and a gunman shot in Avignon. A French policeman pushes bystanders back off the street after a knife attack in Nice
The knife-wielding attacker shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is great), a religious phrase often co-opted by Islamist extremists, before killing the three people in a church.
Hours later, a man wielding a handgun was shot dead by police near Avignon, around 250km away. He is believed to have been a member of the far-right Génération identitaire movement.
President Emmanuel Macron said France had been attacked «over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief», and pledged thousands more soldiers would be deployed to protect key sites, such as places of worship and schools.
«And I say it with lots of clarity again today: we will not give any ground,» he added.
Mr Macron also tweeted: “In France, there is only one community — the national community,” and “Whatever your religion, believer or not, we must unite at these times.” He told the people of Nice: ”We won’t give in to any terrorist thinking.»
French consulate guard in Saudi Arabia attacked with knife
State television in Saudi Arabia reported that a Saudi man had been arrested in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after attacking and injuring a guard at the French consulate. The French embassy said the man was in hospital after a knife assault but his life was not in danger.
A list of all the attacks France has suffered in the past five years
25 September 2020: Two people were stabbed and wounded near the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, where Islamist militants carried out a deadly attack in 2015. A man originally from Pakistan was arrested over the attack.
3 October 2019: Mickael Harpon, a 45-year-old IT specialist with security clearance to work in the Paris police headquarters, killed three police officers and one civilian employee before being shot dead by police. He had converted to Islam about 10 years earlier.
23 March 2018: A gunman kills three people in southwestern France after holding up a car, firing on police and taking hostages in a supermarket, screaming «Allahu Akbar». Security forces storm the building and kill him.
26 July 2016: Two attackers kill a priest and seriously wound another hostage in a church in northern France before being shot dead by French police. Francois Hollande, who was France’s president at the time, says the two hostage-takers had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
14 July 2016: A gunman drives a heavy truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice, killing 86 people and injuring scores more in an attack claimed by Islamic State. The attacker is identified as a Tunisian-born Frenchman.
14 June 2016: A Frenchman of Moroccan origin stabs a police commander to death outside his home in a Paris suburb and kills his partner, who also worked for the police. The attacker told police negotiators during a siege that he was answering an appeal by Islamic State.
13 November 2015: Paris is rocked by multiple, near simultaneous gun-and-bomb attacks on entertainment sites around the city, in which 130 people are killed and 368 are wounded. Islamic State says it was responsible for the attacks. Two of the 10 known perpetrators were Belgian citizens and three others were French.
7-9 January 2015: Two Islamist militants break into an editorial meeting of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on 7 January and rake it with bullets, killing 12 people. Another militant kills a policewoman the next day and takes hostages at a supermarket on 9 January, killing four before police shoot him dead.
