Deadly Knife Attack in Nice Is Terrorism, French Officials Say
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
