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Deadly Knife Attack in Nice Is Terrorism, French Officials Say New Terror Attacks Leave France Embattled at Home and Abroad
(about 2 hours later)
PARIS — Less than two weeks after the beheading of a French schoolteacher, an assailant carrying a knife entered the towering neo-Gothic basilica in the southern city of Nice early Thursday and killed three people, further inflaming tensions in a country already on edge and leading the authorities to increase the terrorism threat level. NICE, France — A terror attack that killed three people in Nice on Thursday left France increasingly embattled at home and abroad, as the government called for toughening measures against Islamist extremism, amid rising tensions with Muslim nations.
Officials in Nice described the attack as Islamist terrorism, and it was quickly followed by a flurry of reports of other incidents — including one that involved a knife-wielding assailant outside a French consulate in Saudi Arabia — though it was not immediately clear whether the events were coordinated. A knife-wielding assailant left two people dead in Nice’s towering neo-Gothic basilica, including a 60-year-old woman who was nearly decapitated, less than two weeks after the beheading of a teacher shook the nation. A third victim died on Thursday after taking refuge in a nearby bar.
“Very clearly it is France that is attacked,” President Emmanuel Macron said from Nice, calling the act an “Islamist terrorist attack” and adding that “at the same time, one of our consular sites in Jeddah was attacked.” Jean-François Ricard, France’s top antiterrorism prosecutor, said the suspected killer was a Tunisian man, born in 1999, who had entered France after arriving in Italy on Sept. 20. He said the man, who was unknown to the French authorities, was arrested after lunging at police officers while yelling “Allahu akbar,” and was hospitalized with serious wounds.
The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, told reporters on Thursday that a suspect, who has not been identified, was arrested after being shot and wounded by the police. The suspect “kept repeating ‘Allahu akbar’ in front of us even though he was sedated,” Mr. Estrosi said, adding this left “no doubt” about the motivation behind the attack. “Very clearly it is France that is attacked,” President Emmanuel Macron said after traveling quickly to Nice. French authorities placed a jittery country on its highest terrorism threat level.
Jean-François Ricard, France’s top antiterrorism prosecutor, said at a news conference in Nice that the suspect, who was carrying a document from the Italian Red Cross, had been identified as a Tunisian man born in 1999. Mr. Ricard said he had arrived in Italy on the island of Lampedusa on Sept. 20, and disembarked in the Italian port of Bari on Oct. 9. The killings came at a time when the government’s recent words and deeds have put it at odds with Muslims in France and abroad, including heads of state like President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. What many French people see as their country’s uncompromising defense of its safety and free expression, many Muslims consider to be scapegoating and blasphemous insults to their religion.
Surveillance camera footage placed him at the main train station in Nice early on Thursday morning, Mr. Ricard said, where he is seen turning his jacket inside out and changing shoes before making his way to the church. Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Macron called for an “Islam of enlightenment” and “an Islam that can be at peace with the republic,” in what he described as a renewed fight against radicalism and challenges to the nation’s secular ideals. Since the killing of the teacher in a suburb of Paris, his government has unfurled a wide dragnet against what it has characterized as Islamist extremism, vexing many French Muslims and stirring strong rebuke from Muslim nations.
One of the victims, a 60-year old woman, had her throat cut so deeply that it was akin to a decapitation, Mr. Ricard said. Another victim, a 55-year-old man who was the church’s sacristan, also had serious throat wounds. The steps have included expelling imprisoned foreigners suspected of terrorist links, carrying out raids and rolling up a Muslim group it accuses of “advocating radical Islam” and hate speech. But few of those affected by the measures had any direct connection to the beheading of the teacher, who was killed by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee.
A third victim, a 44-year-old woman, escaped the basilica but died of her wounds shortly afterward, Mr. Ricard said. The suspect, who is still hospitalized with serious wounds, is unknown to French police and intelligence services, Mr. Ricard said. The scope of the government’s response and the sharp language of some of its leaders have left Mr. Macron open to criticism that he is politicizing the attack and playing to voters who might otherwise defect to his challengers on the far right. His education minister has described politicians on the left as apologists for Islamists. His interior minister has linked “political Islam” to terrorism and has even disparaged Muslim-oriented food aisles in supermarkets.
Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that the authorities were placing France on its highest terrorism threat level, with heightened security at places of worship, and Mr. Macron said that military patrols around the country — a common sight over the past few years — would be more than doubled from 3,000 troops to 7,000. Palestinians have called for a ‘‘day of rage’’ against France. Protests and boycotts of French products have gained traction from Bangladesh to Qatar. And Muslim leaders have condemned Mr. Macron for what they describe as a kind of collective punishment of France’s Muslims.
Officials across the political spectrum condemned the attack, as did French Muslim representatives. On Thursday French officials were particularly outraged by comments on Twitter by Mahathir Mohamad, a former Malaysian prime minister, who said that Muslims had a right to “kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.” The French government quickly asked Twitter to suspend Mr. Mahathir’s account for inciting hatred and violence. The post was later removed.
The killings in Nice come at an extremely fraught moment for France, which is still shaken by the beheading of the teacher, Samuel Paty, and is about to enter a monthlong lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus. None of that has shaken the resolve of the French government, or indeed much of its public, that the crackdown is justified in a country that has been the target of dozens of attacks, large and small, by Islamist extremists since 2015 that have left more than 200 dead. The most recent killings in particular — first outside a public school and then at a church — have struck at two central pillars of French identity.
Since Mr. Paty’s killing by a young Muslim man who was offended that the teacher had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on free speech, the French authorities have undertaken a broad crackdown against Muslim extremists in France, conducting dozens of raids, temporarily closing a major mosque and disbanding a Muslim aid group that the authorities have accused of “advocating radical Islam” and hate speech.
The debate that followed, and the tone of some of Mr. Macron’s ministers, has left many of France’s six million Muslims feeling alienated.
But the measures to crack down on extremism have found widespread support — including among representatives of France’s Muslim community — in a nation still traumatized by Islamic State-inspired terrorist attacks in recent years. One of the deadliest was in Nice in 2016, when a Tunisian man drove a 19-ton refrigeration truck through crowds that had gathered on the city’s main seaside promenade to watch fireworks, killing 86.
“If we are attacked once more it is because of the values that are ours,” Mr. Macron said, including freedom of worship and freedom of expression. “We will not yield anything.”“If we are attacked once more it is because of the values that are ours,” Mr. Macron said, including freedom of worship and freedom of expression. “We will not yield anything.”
Gilles Kepel, an expert on Islam who has advised Mr. Macron on religious issues, said the attack in Nice on Thursday had targeted a pillar of France’s society.
“Earlier this month, the target was a teacher, a symbolic figure of the French Republic,” Mr. Kepel said of Mr. Paty’s beheading. “In Nice, the attack occurred in a church, which represents a more ancient component of France’s identity ­— Christianity.” Yet both inside France and outside, the assaults have inflamed a significant and fraught moment in the life of a country that has long struggled to integrate Europe’s largest Muslim population is now reverberating beyond its borders.
Mr. Kepel said the date of the attack, on Mawlid Al-Nabi, the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, carried special resonance. The killings in the Nice basilica followed nearly two months of escalating tensions that began when the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad early last month to mark the trial of alleged accomplices in the deadly 2015 attack against the publication.
Several leaders of Muslim countries, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, have denounced France’s staunch defense of secularism and free speech. Mr. Macron and other French officials fiercely defended the drawings as freedom of expression. The teacher who was beheaded had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed in a class on secularism and free expression, angering some Muslims, including the 18-year-old man, a complete stranger, who sought him out and killed him.
On Thursday French officials were particularly outraged by comments made after the attack on Twitter by Mahathir Mohamad, a former Malaysian prime minister, who argued that Muslims had a right to “kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.” The French government quickly asked Twitter to suspend Mr. Mahathir’s account for inciting hatred and violence. The post was later removed. Thursday’s attack held disturbing echoes of that murder, and it immediately fortified calls among some French authorities for even tougher measures that could further polarize the country.
“As France firmly defends its values, some radicalized individuals may think, ‘You want to attack our sanctities, we are going to attack yours,’” Mr. Kepel said. “Enough is enough,” Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, told BFM TV. “It is now time for France to exempt itself of peacetime laws to permanently annihilate Islamo-facism from our territory.”
“The targets seem unlimited, and so can be those willing to carry out attacks against them,” he added. “That’s what makes it so hard for security services to spot and stop them.” In Nice, as dozens of people stood outside the Notre Dame de l’Assomption basilica late Thursday afternoon, tensions were tangible — and perhaps worsened by the fact that France is about to enter a monthlong lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Mr. Macron has vowed to crack down on what he called “Islamist separatism” with a range of measures aimed at countering extremism in the Muslim community, including stringent limits on home-schooling and increasing scrutiny of religious schools, making associations that solicit public funds sign a “charter” on secularism, and phasing out the widespread practice of bringing over foreign imams to work in France while investing in home-based training of imams. As a local imam spoke to reporters and called on people not to conflate Muslims with terrorists, a resident of a local building yelled “Go away!” from her balcony.
Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the French Council of Muslim Faith, asked in a Twitter post that French Muslims cancel all festivities celebrating the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, “as a sign of mourning and solidarity with the victims and their loved ones.” Imen Gharbi, a 24-year-old Tunisian who has been studying art history in Nice for two years, said she was concerned about the atmosphere of the last few days. “This attack shocks me, it’s disgusting and like everyone else I condemn it, but we must not lump together Muslims and terrorists,” she said.
At the French consulate in the Saudi city of Jeddah, a suspect was quickly arrested after a separate knife attack that wounded a security guard, who was hospitalized. And in France, in a sign of the heightened security level, the attack in Nice was followed by a flurry of other incidents. Ms. Gharbi, who is Muslim, said that she felt targeted by people’s comments on Islamic terrorism. “People are angry and I don’t feel safe anymore.”
At least one of them seemed directly inspired by the attack in Nice. In Sartrouville, a town northwest of Paris, a man was arrested near a church after being flagged by local residents, according to the police. The local authorities said that the man’s father had called the police after his son left wanting to “do the same as in Nice.” Christian Aucler, a retired tax adviser, said that the beheading of the teacher and Thursday’s killing were evidence that pillars of French society were under attack.
Another incident appeared unrelated. In the southern city of Avignon, a man who had threatened bystanders with a handgun was shot and killed by the police. Questions were raised about possible ties to the attack in Nice, but a local prosecutor told Mediapart, an investigative news site, that the attacker, who had threatened a shopkeeper of North African descent, was an “unbalanced” man with ties to a far-right group. “It is clear that there is a religion that is trying to take over our principles,” Mr. Aucler said, adding, “The French are very attached to their history, to their culture. Seeing parts of their civilization attacked and questioned is something they experience very badly.”
In the central city of Lyon, a man carrying a long knife was arrested at a train station, according to the local authorities. Pierre Oliver, the mayor of the Second Arrondissement in Lyon, said the police had “prevented a new tragedy.” According to the newspaper Le Figaro, the man, an Afghan born in 1994, was known to French intelligence services for “radical Islamism.” Mr. Ricard, said the suspect in Nice had been recorded by surveillance cameras on Thursday morning at the city’s main train station, where he could be seen turning his jacket inside out and changing shoes before making his way to the basilica. Inside the church, he said, the man cut the 60-year-old victim’s throat so deeply that she was almost decapitated.
In recent years, France has experienced several attacks like those carried out on Thursday. The country faced a string of mass-casualty attacks in 2015 and 2016 by organized networks, but the most recent assaults have more often been isolated acts carried out by lone assailants living in France, which can be harder to prevent. The string of attacks over the past five years has moved France to the right politically. The caricatures in Charlie Hebdo — which many French people would once have considered juvenile, provocative and even bigoted — have become a test of France’s commitment to its secular ideals, while to many Muslims they are inherently offensive.
None of the assailants in two previous attacks this fall, including a stabbing in September near the former offices of Charlie Hebdo — the satirical newspaper that printed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad — were known to the authorities. In 2006, when Charlie Hebdo first published the cartoons, the conservative president at the time, Jacques Chirac, denounced the publication, saying that the foundation of the Republic also rested on “the values of tolerance and the respect of all faiths.” Mr. Macron defended their republication as the “right to blasphemy.”
Church bells around France rang out in the afternoon to honor the victims. With an eye on the presidential election of 2022, Mr. Macron, whose popularity has been hurt by the government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic, has been moving rightward on issues like crime and the place of Islam in France.
Hugo Micheron, a researcher at Princeton University who has studied radicalization in French prisons and suburbs, said that churches were “quite usual targets” for Islamist assailants in Europe and elsewhere. “I think that there are some topics on which we can water down our words,” said Morgan Manzi, a 42-year-old building worker, who had come to the basilica late Thursday afternoon. “I think that peace is sometimes better than freedom of expression.”
In 2016, the Rev. Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old priest, was celebrating Mass in Normandy when two men with knives entered his small church and slit his throat. The Islamic State took responsibility for the killing of Father Hamel, shocking France just weeks after the truck attack in Nice. Mr. Manzi, who described himself as an atheist, said he was worried about tension rising in recent days following comments by government officials and their uncompromising defense of the caricatures’ republication. He added, “There will be reprisals.”
Later that year, two radicalized women tried to ignite a car loaded with gas cylinders near the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris in the name of the Islamic State, shedding a light on the role of female jihadists in homegrown terrorism. And a man is currently on trial in France over a failed plot to attack a church in Villejuif, a Parisian suburb, that left one woman dead in 2015. The long avenue facing the Notre-Dame basilica was a swirl of rumors and comments on Thursday night, with bystanders debating immigration, the government’s antiterrorism response and the violence plaguing the country.
Megan Specia contributed reporting from London and Constant Méheut from Paris. About 200 members of a local far-right group protested noisily outside the basilica, singing the national anthem, La Marseillaise.
Standing in the crowd was Abdelkader Sadouni, the imam who had been yelled at by the woman in her balcony.
“Our religion is light-years away from this — there’s no way any Muslim would approve of this,” he said. But he worried aloud that terrorist attacks had instilled a fear of Islam in the national psyche.
Mr. Sadouni said that terrorists were “breaking this national union to which we aspire.”
“It worries me, that’s what they’re looking for, and they’re succeeding,” he said.
Norimitsu Onish and Constant Méheut reported from Nice. Reporting was contributed by Aurelien Breeden in Paris and Elian Peltier and Megan Specia in London.