ISIS knifemen storm French church, kill priest

Assailants loyal to Islamic State forced an elderly priest to his knees before slitting his throat and took several worshippers hostage in a French church on Tuesday before police shot the attackers dead.

Police shot dead the two men after they cut the throat of Father Jacques Hamel, 85, who had stepped in as a replacement priest for mass in the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray church, near Rouen in northern France.

ISIS also claimed responsibility for the truck attack in Nice on July 14, which killed 84 people, as well as the Charlie Hebdo and November attacks in Paris previous year.

He said the pope was feeling “the pain and horror of this absurd violence” and “condemned in the most radical way any form of hate”. It was the first known attack claimed by IS inside a church in the West.

At least one of the attackers appeared to be on a watch list, which required him to wear an electronic tag to allow security officials to track his movements, said a police official cited by The Associated Press.

Another person inside the church was seriously injured and was hovering between life and death, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.

French president Francois Hollande identified the attackers as Islamist terrorists, and the IS news agency Amaq cited a security source saying the attack was by “soldiers of the Islamic State”. The president told the pontiff “that when a priest is attacked, it is all France that is wounded and that everything would be done to protect its churches and places of worship”, according to a statement from Hollande’s office.

“We must be merciless”, Sarkozy said in a statement to reporters.

It turned out most of the victims in the Lahore attack were Muslim, as were a third of those killed in the Nice truck rampage earlier this month, exposing ISIS to potential criticism among jihadis that it is shedding the blood of Muslims.

Dominique Lebrun, the archbishop of Rouen, confirmed the death of 84-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel. They then tried to enter but were unable, Mr Molins said, because the attackers used three hostages as a human shield to block the door.

May called the attack “sickening” and sent condolences to the people of France.

He had retired aged 75 but helped out when necessary – and was reportedly standing in for the regular priest, Father Auguste Moanda-Phuati, when two men wielding knives burst into the church at 9.43am French time on Tuesday.

“I told the president it was urgently necessary for this to never happen again”, he said, struggling to speak as he fought back tears.

Like other towns around the city of Rouen, Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray has a growing problem with radicalisation, she added.

The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific terrorist attack today at a Catholic church in Normandy, France.

“It was not Catholics who were targeted; it was all the people of France”.

“The fact that this episode took place in a church, killing a priest, a minister of the Lord and involving the faithful, is something that affects us profoundly”, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said. “Let us together be the last to cry”. “The Catholic Church has no other arms besides prayer and fraternity between men”.

French newspaper Le Figaro reported the church was suspected to have been on a list of Catholic places of worship in the area around Paris drawn up as possible targets by Sid Ahmed Ghlam, an Algerian student arrested past year on suspicion of murdering a mother-of-one during a botched attempt to attack a church in Villejuif.