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| - A knife attacker killed three people, cutting the throat of at least one woman, inside a church in Nice on the French Riviera on Thursday. The brutal killings come only two weeks after a French teacher was decapitated outside his school north of Paris by an Islamist extremist, after the teacher showed his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of speech. Here is what we know so far: At 9 am French time (0800 GMT) a man with a knife began attacking people praying inside the Basilica of Notre-Dame in the heart of the Mediterranean city. Three people were killed including a woman who the attacker tried to decapitate in the church, according to officials. A man was also found dead inside the church, while another woman with knife wounds who managed to escape to a nearby bar died soon afterwards. The killer was shot and wounded by police who arrived quickly at the scene. Videos seen by AFP show he was hit at least six times in a side exit from the church. Even as he was being arrested the man continued to shout "Allah Akbar" (God is greatest), before he was rushed to the city's Pasteur hospital. The 21-year-old Tunisian suspect only arrived in France earlier this month after coming to Europe on a migrant boat via the Italian island of Lampedusa at the end of September, an official source told AFP. The suspected knifeman called himself "Brahim" when he was arrested and later claimed to be Brahim Aouissaoui, the source added. The dead man was the church's sacristan, a 45-year-old father of two girls, according to Canon Philippe Asso, the church's most senior cleric. The killer's first victim was a elderly woman, who he tried to behead, and the other woman who died was a mother in her 40s. Police said earlier that several others were injured but added that the death toll is not expected to rise. The French authorities are treating it as a terror attack, with the anti-terrorist prosecutor immediately opening an inquiry into "murder and attempted murder linked to a terrorist enterprise." President Emmanuel Macron called it an "Islamist terrorist attack". sm/fg/dl
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