A suspect is arrested after an attacker with a sawed-off shotgun shot a Greek Orthodox priest in the chest before fleeing in the French city of Lyon, a prosecutor said.
“A person who could correspond to the description given by the initial witnesses has been placed in police custody,” Lyon’s public prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet says in a statement, adding that the suspect was not carrying a weapon when he was arrested.
Other reports say the priest was shot in the abdomen with a hunting rifle.
The attack comes as France reels from two other killings by Islamic extremists and protests against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
On Thursday, a Tunisian killed three people at a church in the southern city of Nice, and earlier this month, an extremist beheaded a schoolteacher for showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of a class discussion on free speech.
Earlier Saturday, before the attack, President Emmanuel Macron sought to calm flaring tensions with Muslims around the world, telling an Arab-world TV channel he understood that caricatures of Muhammad could be shocking, while lashing out at “lies” that say the French state was behind them.
Police officers search for clues after a priest was shot in the city of Lyon, central France, October 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
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