MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The men were neutralized by security forces after they stabbed the 87-year-old priest to death at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a small community near Rouen in northern France. President Francois Hollande said they had claimed links to Daesh.
Timmermans said the violence of the attack "demonstrates the barbarity of a nihilistic and murderous ideology that denies all our core values and which aims to take away our freedoms."
The Commission’s first vice president stressed that terrorists would fail. "Our convictions are too strong, our solidarity unbreakable. A solidarity that is expressed by all and all through the European Union, or the world," he wrote on Facebook.
The Islamist group has meanwhile claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a US-based group SITE which monitors Daesh-affiliated media.
