Priest shot outside French church, suspect arrested
01 November, 2020
An attacker armed with a sawn-off shotgun seriously wounded a Greek Orthodox priest in a shooting outside a church in the French city of Lyon on Saturday (Oct 31), with the united states still reeling from a deadly church attack days before.
Nikolaos Kakavelaki, 52, was closing his Lyon church mid-afternoon when he was attacked and is currently in a significant condition in hospital, said a police source who asked not to be named.
The attacker fled the scene but Lyon's public prosecutor later announced that a suspect have been arrested.
"Somebody who could match the description given by the initial witnesses has been located in policy custody," prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet said, adding that the suspect was not carrying a weapon when he was arrested.
The priest was shot twice in the chest at point-blank range, according to sources near the inquiry.
The motive for the attack had not been clear.
"At this stage, no hypothesis has been eliminated, nor favoured," Jacquet said.
But it comes at the same time when France has already been on edge following the killing of three persons inside a church in Nice on Thursday and the beheading of a teacher earlier this month who had showed his class a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed.
The Lyon prosecutor's office said in a statement that witnesses, and a passing police patrol, heard gunshots then "saw a person fleeing and discovered a guy with gunshot wounds at the trunk door of the church".
The prosecutors said an investigation have been launched, and it remains "in close contact with the national anti-terrorist prosecution".
The tiny, art-deco style Orthodox church is located in a residential area of Lyon that was especially quiet as a result of new lockdown measures introduced in France on Friday to stem the growing coronavirus pandemic.
In Paris, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin opened a crisis cell meeting to consider the problem.
"ABOMINABLE ACT"
Archbishop Ieronymos, the top of the Greek Orthodox church, denounced a "horror that defies human logic".
"Intolerant and fanatic extremists, fundamentalists of violence and death use religion as a bullet which aims at the heart of freedom and especially the freedom of belief of others," he told reporters in Athens.
European Council President Charles Michel condemned "this new abominable act in Lyon".
He added in a tweet that "in Europe, the freedom of conscience is guaranteed for all and should be respected, violence is intolerable and should be condemned".
EU Parliament President David Sassoli said that "Europe will never bow to violence and terrorism".
Saturday's shooting employs three people were killed in a knife rampage in the church in the southern town of Nice on Thursday.
A Tunisian suspect was shot and injured by police close to the scene of that attack.
MACRON TRIES TO CALM TENSIONS
France was already tense after the republication in early September of cartoons of the prophet Mohammed by the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, which was followed by an attack outside its former offices, the beheading of the teacher and the attack in Nice.
Following the teacher's death, President Emmanuel Macron said France could not renounce its laws permitting blasphemous caricatures, sparking protests over the Muslim world.
Within an apparent bid to attain out to Muslims, Macron gave an interview with Qatar-based TV channel Al-Jazeera on Saturday where he said he understood that caricatures of Mohammed could possibly be shocking.
He also lashed out at "lies" that the French state was behind the caricatures, and said he'll "always defend in my own country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw".
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has warned that French citizens face a risk of security "wherever they are", saying alerts had been sent to all French nationals abroad.
Prime Minister Jean Castex spoke of "the government's determination to permit each and everyone to apply their worship in complete safety and in complete freedom."
He was speaking in the northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, in which a catholic priest was killed in an Islamist attack in 2016.
France went right into a second coronavirus lockdown on Friday however the government has exempted places of worship until Monday, permitting them to celebrate the Christian All Saints' Day on Sunday.
Following the deadly attack in Nice, Macron announced increased surveillance of churches by France's on-the-street military force, which is usually to be bolstered to 7,000 troops from 3,000.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
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