Police arrested a suspected gunman on Saturday, 31 October after he shot and seriously wounded a Greek Orthodox priest in Lyon, France.
According to reports in the French media, the priest, identified as Nikolaos Kakavelakis, 52, was shot at twice and suffered injuries in the stomach. The incident occured at about 4pm local time on Saturday as he was closing the church in the city’s seventh arrondissement, police said.
According to a report in The Guardian, a suspect was arrested in the city around 7pm local time and the Lyon public prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation for attempted murder, and was liaising closely with the national anti-terrorism prosecutor. The shooting has not so far been declared a terrorist attack.
The shooting comes three days after a man armed with a knife killed three people in a church in Nice on the Côte d’Azur, and barely two weeks after teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded outside his school 20 miles north-west of Paris.
While French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that he has raised the country’s security threat alert to the highest level, the incident may yet again raise serious concerns within the administration.
France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin has also arrived in Lyon, France’s third-largest city.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more details emerge.
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