MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th October, 2020) French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday that the nation is at war with the "Islamist ideology" and related terrorist activities, after a series of disturbing attacks across France in October.
France has been shaken since Thursday morning, when a 21-year-old Tunisian man stabbed dead three people in Notre-Dame church in southern Nice city. The attacker was promptly seized by police and taken to hospital due to injures received during his arrest. The assault was followed by another knife-stabbing attempt in French city of Avignon and at the French consulate in Saudi Arabia the same day. Violent acts came two weeks after brutal beheading of French history teacher by radicalized teen in Paris.
"France is at war. We are at war with an enemy outside and inside. We are at war with the Islamist ideology," Darmanin wrote on Twitter.
In a separate tweet, the minister described Islamism as "21st century fascism" and added that French democracy is designed to defeat the greatest barbarities "within a legal framework".
Earlier on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that France was targeted by radical Islamism and mobilized extra troops to combat the terrorist threat.
