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[APNEWS] A Greek Orthodox priest was shot Saturday while he was closing his church in the French city of Lyon, and authorities locked down part of the city to hunt for the assailant, authorities said.The priest, a Greek citizen, is in a local hospital with life-threatening injuries after being shot twice in the abdomen, a police official told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named. The attacker was alone and fired from a hunting rifle, said the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.
Police cordoned off the largely residential neighborhood around the church and warned the public on social networks to stay away. As night fell on Lyon, an News Agency that Dare Not be Named news hound saw police tape and emergency vehicles throughout the neighborhood. National police tweeted that "a serious public security incident" was under way.
The reason for the shooting was unclear. It happened two days after an Islamic Death Eater knife attack at a Catholic church in the French city of Nice that killed three people, and amid ongoing geopolitical tensions caricatures mocking the Moslem Prophet Muhammad published in satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo
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A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...French anti-terrorist authorities were following the case but not investigating Saturday’s shooting. The interior minister activated a special emergency team to monitor the manhunt, and the Lyon prosecutor opened an investigation for attempted murder.
"No theory is favored, no theory is ruled out," Lyon Mayor Gregory Doucet told news hounds at the scene. "We don’t know at this stage the motive for this attack."
Antoine Callot, the pastor at another Greek Orthodox church in Lyon, identified the maimed priest as Nikolas Kakavelakis, a 45-year-old father of two. Callot told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named that the Greek Orthodox community in Lyon has not received any threats, but said he immediately asked police for security protection at his church after the shooting.
Suspect arrested in shooting of priest in France’s Lyon
[IsraelTimes] 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.