2016 Normandy Church Attack

On 26 July 2016, two Islamist terrorists attacked participants in a Mass at a Catholic church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy, northern France. Wielding knives and wearing fake explosive belts, the men took six people captive and later killed one of them, 85-year-old priest Jacques Hamel, by slitting his throat, and also critically wounded an 86-year-old man. The terrorists were shot dead by BRI police as they tried to leave the church.

The attackers, 19-year-olds Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which claimed responsibility for the attack.Attentats en France : ce que l'on sait de Rachid Kassim, membre présumé de l'EI
sur '' france24.com'' le 12 septembre 2016.

Attack

At about 9:45 am on 26 July 2016, two men wielding knives and a handgun entered the 16th-century church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray as Mass was being held. Hamel, three nuns, and two parishioners were taken hostage and ordered to sit together in a group. One attacker wore a fake explosive belt and the other wore a backpack made to look like it carried a bomb. The handgun was later described as an "old, non-functioning pistol".

A hostage said the attackers filmed themselves and "did a sort of sermon" at the altar in Arabic. On the recording, which was later found by police, the attackers also shouted "you Christians are eliminating us".

The attackers forced Hamel to kneel at the foot of the altar and then slit his throat while screaming " Allahu akbar". Hamel had tried to resist, pushing his attackers away with his feet while saying "go away, Satan". Another hostage, an 86-year-old parishioner, was ordered to photograph or film the priest after he had been killed. The attackers then knifed him, leaving him critically wounded. The other hostages were largely unhurt. After the killing, the two men talked with the nuns about the Koran. One also warned "as long as there are bombs on Syria, we will continue our attacks".

During the killing, one nun hostage ran outside without the perpetrators noticing. She stopped a passing motorist, who alerted the police."Les terroristes ont mis le prêtre à genoux" : la sœur qui a lancé l'alerte évoque une scène d'"horreur"
Closer. 26 July 2016 After police arrived at the church, they tried to negotiate with the two men through a small window opening on to the sacristy. Armed police then tried to enter the church and end the siege, but the attackers had lined the hostages up in front of the door, as human shields. At about 10:45 am, the hostages fled the church, followed by the two attackers. One wielding a handgun, they charged at police shouting "Allahu akbar" and were shot dead by officers from Rouen's Research and Intervention Brigade.

Within hours of the attack, the ISIL-linked Amaq News Agency said that the attack was carried out by two "soldiers" from the group, in response to ISIL's general call to attack countries of the coalition fighting it. On 27 July, Amaq published a video of the two perpetrators pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Jacques Hamel

Jacques Hamel (born 1930 in Darnétal) was named a vicar at the St.-Antoine church in Le Petit-Quevilly in 1958, a vicar at the Notre-Dame de Lourdes church in Sotteville-lès-Rouen in 1967, a parish priest at Saint-Pierre-lès-Elbeuf in 1975 and a parish priest in Cléon in 1988. He joined the church at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in 2000 and assumed his role as the parish's auxiliary priest in 2005. With Mohammed Karabila, the president of Normandy's Regional Council of the Muslim Faith, he worked on an interfaith committee.

Perpetrators

One of the attackers was identified as Algerian-born 19-year-old Adel Kermiche. Kermiche, who lived in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, had twice in 2015 attempted to travel to Syria. He was once returned by Germany, and once turned back by the authorities at the Turkish border. As a result, he spent time in a French jail before being released in March 2016. Kermiche was released after writing to the judge "I am a Muslim based on the values of mercy, kindness (...) I am not an extremist," and insisting that he recited his prayers twice a day and "wanted to see his friends and marry". The prosecutor opposed his release. Upon his release, he was electronically tagged and a curfew was placed on him, requiring him to live at his parents' home, which was near the church, and to leave his house only between 08:30 to 12:30 and 14:00 to 18:00. Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of France, said the release of Kermiche was a "failure" of the French justice. Kermiche's writings were found after his death, in which he spoke of meeting his "spiritual guide" in a French prison, he called this guide his "sheikh," who "gave him ideas". Kermiche's fiancée was Sarah Hervouet, a "convert to Islam," and one of the Paris bomb plot conspirators.

On 28 July, the second attacker was named by investigators as 19-year-old Abdel Malik Petitjean. He was the France-born son of Algerian immigrants. He had been "on the radar of the police since June 29", after he also tried to enter Syria from Turkey. French intelligence had received his picture four days before the attack, but they were not given a name or description at that time the prosecutor's office said. He was born in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, in Lorraine and grew up in Aix-les-Bains