Lengthy article.
France mourns 3 killed in church attack, tightens security
''Investigators detained a second suspect in Thursday's attack on the Notre Dame Basilica in the Riviera city of Nice, a judicial official said. The 47-year-old man is believed to have been in contact with the assailant the night before, according to the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.
The attacker, Ibrahim Issaoui, was seriously wounded by police and hospitalized in life-threatening condition, authorities said. French authorities called the attack “Islamist terrorism,” and prosecutors in France and Tunisia are investigating.
A substitute prosecutor at the Tunisian anti-terrorism prosecutor's office, Mohsen Dali, told The Associated Press that the claim of responsibility came in an online post saying the attack was staged by a group called Al Mehdi of Southern Tunisia, previously unknown to Tunisian authorities.''
They included 55-year-old Vincent Loques, a father of two who was the church's sacristan, in charge of its holy objects, according to local broadcaster France-Bleu. Another was a 44-year-old mother of three from Brazil, according to Brazil's Foreign Ministry. France-Bleu said her name was Simone and she had studied cooking in Nice and helped poor communities in the area.
In an interview broadcast Friday with Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV, the attacker's mother said she was shocked by the events.
From the Tunisian province of Sfax, the mother, her eyes wet with tears, said she was surprised to hear her son was in France when he called upon his arrival and had no idea what he was planning. “You don't know the French language, you don't know anyone there, you're going to live alone there, why, why did you go there?” she said she told him over the phone at the time.
His brother told Al-Arabiya that Issaoui had informed the family he would sleep in front of the church, and sent them a photograph showing him at the cathedral where the attack took place. “He didn't tell me anything,” he said. A neighbour said he knew the assailant when he was a mechanic and held various other odd jobs, and had shown no signs of radicalization.
France's anti-terrorism prosecutor said the suspect is a Tunisian born in 1999 who reached the Italian island of Lampedusa, a key landing point for migrants crossing in boats from North Africa, on Sept. 20 and travelled to Bari, a port city in southern Italy, on Oct. 9.''
