Attack on Lyon: a priest seriously injured in a shooting against a church

Police track down man who fled attack on Greek Orthodox church that left priest seriously injured

Police track down gunman who seriously injured Greek Orthodox priest in the French city of Lyon

The priest was shot twice around 4 p.m. local time as he closed the church in the city’s seventh arrondissement, a police source told FranceInfoTV Journalists at the scene said they saw injured man being pulled out of the building

France’s interior ministry said in a statement that police and emergency services were on the scene and advised passers-by to avoid the area

The attacker was on the run, police said. « He is a man of Mediterranean appearance, measuring 190m, wearing a long black raincoat and a black hat. It seems he was hiding a sawed-off shotgun under his coat He shot it in the direction of the Orthodox priest and fled, ”Ludovic Cassier of the SGP Police unit police union told French radio

The Lyon prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation into an attempted murder and had close relations with the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office

The shooting comes three days after a man armed with a knife killed three people in a church in Nice on the French Riviera, and just a fortnight after teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in front of his school, 32 km north-west of Paris

Lyon newspaper Le Progrès reported that the priest, a Greek national in his forties, was seriously injured in the attack. Neighbors in what has been described as a quiet residential area told the newspaper they had heard two shots, followed by screams of pain

The victim was conscious when she was taken from the Greek Orthodox Church on Rue du Père Chevrier to an ambulance, the newspaper reported, and was able to tell witnesses that she did not know the man who attacked him

French Prime Minister Jean Castex said he was interrupting a visit to Rouen in Normandy and returning to Paris where a large incident room was being opened at the Interior Ministry

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted that he was on his way to Lyon, France’s third largest city France has stepped up security across the country following the attacks, and ministers and officials warned that more was likely

« We are in a war against an enemy who is both inside and outside, » Darmanin told RTL radio on Friday. « We must understand that there was and that there was there will be other events such as these terrible attacks « 

President Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday that the country’s security threat alert had been raised to the highest level 4,000 additional troops were deployed across the country as part of Operation Sentinel, Macron said, pointing out the total number of soldiers mobilized to 7000

Security has also been stepped up in churches and other religious sites before All Saints’ Day, Sunday 3,500 additional gendarmes are also to be enlisted to protect schools when they open after Monday’s mid-term break, and 120 additional police officers were sent to Nice

Nice striker Brahim Aouissaoui, 21, from Tunisia, was shot dead by police and is in serious condition in hospital Police are still trying to establish exactly how and when the suspect arrived in the city shortly after being refused permission to stay in Italy on October 9

The three people who died in the attack in Nice were a nearly beheaded 60-year-old woman, Vincent Loques, 55, who was the sacristan of the church, and Simone Barreto Silva, 44 Mother of three born in Brazil

Paty was stabbed and beheaded outside his high school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine by Abdullakh Anzorov, 18, of Chechen descent, who was shot dead by police shortly after The teacher showed caricatures of puipils, including that of the Prophet Muhammad, as part of a class discussion on freedom of expression

Protests have taken place in countries from Pakistan and Bangladesh to Lebanon and the Palestinian territories against Macron’s defense of the right to publish the cartoons and a French government crackdown on Islamist extremism, including shutting down mosques and other organizations accused of fomenting radicalism and violence

France, Lyon, Eastern Orthodox Church