Man in custody over alleged links to Nice knife attacker

30 October 2020 - 10:25 By Reuters
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A French soldier stands in front of Notre-Dame church, where a knife attack took place, in Nice, France October 29, 2020.
A French soldier stands in front of Notre-Dame church, where a knife attack took place, in Nice, France October 29, 2020.
Image: REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/Pool

A 47-year-old man has been taken into custody on suspicion of having been in contact with the perpetrator of Thursday's deadly knife attack in Nice, a judicial source said.

On Thursday, a knife-wielding attacker shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in the French city before being shot by police and taken away.

The source said the 47-year-old suspected of having been in contact with the attacker had been detained late on Thursday evening, confirming an earlier report on BFM TV.

France's chief anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said the man suspected of carrying out the attack was a Tunisian, born in 1999, who had arrived in Europe on Sept. 20 in Lampedusa, the Italian island off Tunisia that is a major landing point for migrants from Africa.

A Tunisian security source and a French police source named the suspected attacker as Brahim Aouissaoui.

Ricard said the suspected attacker had entered the city by train early on Thursday morning.  

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