A man armed with a knife killed three people at a church Thursday in the French city of Nice, authorities said.
Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, described the attack near the city’s Notre Dame church, the third in France in two months, as a terrorist attack.
According to Estrosi, the attacker “kept repeating ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is Great) even while under medication,” after being wounded after police shot him while attempting to subdue him.
Anti-terror prosecutors have launched an investigation into the killings, which occurred after the decapitation of middle school teacher Samuel Paty earlier this month. That attacker, of Chechen origin, said he wanted to punish Paty for showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a civics lesson.
It was not immediately clear if Thursday’s killings were linked to the cartoons, which are considered blasphemous by Muslims.
A police source said a woman who was killed in Thursday’s attack was decapitated. French politician Marine Le Pen also mentioned a decapitation occurred in the attack.
Since Paty’s killing, French officials, with broad support from the public, have reasserted their right to display the cartoons, many of which have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with Paty.
The public display of the images has sparked an outpouring of anger in areas of the Muslim world, with some governments accusing French President Emmanuel Macron of following an anti-Islam agenda.
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