An armed attacker shouting, “Allahu Akbar,” beheaded a woman and killed two others at a church in the French city of Nice Thursday morning, in a suspected terrorism attack, according to officials.
The assailant was wounded by police and hospitalized after the killings at the Notre Dame Church, less than a mile from the site where, in 2016, another attacker plowed a truck into a Bastille Day crowd, killing dozens.
Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, said the attacker, who has been identified as Brahim Aouissaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant, had shouted the phrase “Allahu Akbar,” or God is greatest, even after he had been detained, according to the Guardian. He arrived in France earlier this month after quarantining upon his arrival on the Italian island of Lampedusa in late September.
“The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained, he is on his way to the hospital, he is alive,” Estrosi said, according to Reuters.
“Enough is enough,” he added. “It’s time now for France to exonerate itself from the laws of peace in order to definitively wipe out Islamo-fascism from our territory.”
One of the people killed is believed to be the church warden, according to Estrosi.
French President Emmanuel Macron declared that the country was “under attack,” according to Fox News.
“If we are attacked once again it is for the values which are ours: the freedom, for this possibility on our soil to believe freely and not to give in to any spirit of terror,” he continued. “I say it with great clarity once again today: we won’t surrender anything.”
Jean Castex, the French prime minister, said the government’s response to the attack will be “firm, implacable, and immediate,” according to CNN. The country’s security alert level was raised to its highest level following the attack.
Additionally, a Saudi man was arrested after he stabbed a security guard at the French consulate in the city of Jeddah on Thursday, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The guard was taken to the hospital. The state media outlet did not immediately provide a motive behind the attack.
“We express our trust in Saudi authorities to reveal the circumstances behind the attack, as well as to ensure the security of French property and the French community in Saudi Arabia,” the French embassy said in a statement.
Thursday’s incident is the third attack in France since the opening of a terrorism trial in September into the January 2015 killings at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
Earlier this month, a French middle school teacher was beheaded by a man of Chechen origin near Paris. The attacker had said he wanted to punish the teacher for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a civics lesson, according to Reuters.
Many world leaders, President Trump included, shared statements of solidarity with France.
“Our hearts are with the people of France,” Trump tweeted. “America stands with our oldest Ally in this fight. These Radical Islamic terrorist attacks must stop immediately. No country, France or otherwise can long put up with it!”
