PARIS (AP) — French President Francois Hollande is suggesting that the Islamic State group is behind an attack on a church that left an 84-year-old priest dead.
Two attackers seized hostages Tuesday in a church near the Normandy city of Rouen, killing one hostage by slitting his throat before being shot and killed by police, a French security official said.
Another person inside the church was seriously injured and is hovering between life and death, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.
Hollande called it a “vile terrorist attack” and said it’s another more sign that France is at war with IS, which has claimed a string of attacks on France.
“We must lead this war with all our means,” he said in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, where two attackers took hostages on Tuesday before being killed by police.
Hollande expressed support for all France’s Catholics but said the attack targets “all the French.”
France is currently on high alert after an attack in Nice on Bastille Day — July 14 — that killed 84 people and a string of deadly attacks last year claimed by the Islamic State group that killed 147 victims. France is also under a state of emergency and has extra police presence in the wake of the Nice attack in which a man barreled his truck down the city’s famed Promenade des Anglais, mowing down holiday crowds.
The identities of Tuesday’s attackers are unclear.
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