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Attackers Storm French Church and Take Hostages, Killing One Attackers Storm French Church and Take Hostages, Killing a Priest
(about 2 hours later)
PARIS — Two men stormed a church in northern France and took a number of hostages — including a priest, two nuns and several worshipers — Tuesday morning before the assailants were “neutralized” by the police, officials said. PARIS — Two men stormed a parish church in northern France on Tuesday morning and took several hostages, killing a priest and critically injuring another person before the attackers were shot by the police, officials said.
The mayor’s office in the town of St.-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of Rouen about 65 miles northwest of Paris, confirmed that a police operation was underway and that the neighborhood around the church had been sealed off. The Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles counterterrorism investigations in France, announced that it was taking charge of the case, indicating that officials were treating it as a terrorist attack.
An official at the Roman Catholic diocese of Rouen confirmed that one person at the church had been killed but said that the church officials were trying to confirm the victim’s identity. Officials announced that President François Hollande and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve would travel to the town where the church is, St.-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of Rouen that has about 29,000 inhabitants and is about 65 miles northwest of Paris.
At 10:56 a.m., the National Police urged residents via Twitter to keep away from the scene and not enter the perimeter around the church. At 11:15 a.m., the police said that the crisis was over, with two hostage-takers “neutralized” by the police, and that the police were still taking stock of whether people were killed or wounded. Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed horror at what he called “a barbaric attack on a church,” adding: “The whole of France and all Catholics are wounded. We will stand together.”
The Interior Ministry confirmed the death of one man and said another person had been critically injured.
Archbishop Dominique Lebrun of Rouen, in a statement from Krakow, Poland, where he and other Roman Catholic leaders were gathered for the World Youth Day event, identified the victim as the Rev. Jacques Hamel, the auxiliary priest at the church.
Reached on his cellphone, the parish priest, the Rev. Auguste Moanda-Phuati, 50, said that he was rushing back to the church from a vacation near Paris and that Father Hamel was assigned to celebrate Mass on Tuesday.
Archbishop Lebrun and other church officials gave Father Hamel’s age as 84, but the archdiocese’s website said he was born in 1930 and ordained in 1958.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a spokesman for the Vatican, said that Pope Francis was horrified at the “barbaric killing” of a priest and issued “the most severe condemnation of all forms of hatred.”
The attack in France, and the ensuing police response, unfolded rapidly.
At 10:56 a.m., the National Police urged residents via Twitter to keep away from the scene and not enter a security perimeter that had been established around the church. At 11:15 a.m., the police said that the crisis was over, with two hostage-takers “neutralized.”
About an hour later, an Interior Ministry spokesman, Pierre-Henry Brandet, told reporters in Paris that the two attackers had entered the church — it was not immediately clear whether the Mass had ended — armed with weapons. “Were they knives, were they handguns, it’s much too early to say,” he said.
The Rouen unit of the BRI, a police team that specializes in major crimes like armed robberies and kidnappings, “arrived extremely quickly and positioned itself around the church.” The two hostage-takers left the church and were shot by the police, Mr. Brandet said. A police bomb squad searched the church to make sure it was not booby-trapped. Counselors were sent to provide aid to three hostages who were rescued and were not physically injured.
According to Father Moanda-Phuati, the parish priest, the church’s Tuesday Mass begins at 9 a.m. and lasts for about half an hour. Because of the summer holidays, attendance would have been low — fewer than 10 people, he estimated.
France has had three major terrorist attacks in the space of 19 months: an assault on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and other locations around Paris in January 2015, which killed 17 people; coordinated attacks on a soccer stadium, the Bataclan concert hall, and cafes and restaurants in and around Paris on Nov. 13, which killed 130 people; and a rampage on July 14 in the southern city of Nice by a man who rammed a cargo truck into a Bastille Day crowd and shot at the police with a handgun, killing 84 people.