There can never be a place for racism and hatred in France, President Emmanuel Macron said today after a Muslim worshipper was brutally stabbed in a mosque in the south of the country, the French press agency (AFP) reported.
"Racism and hatred based on religion can have no place in France. Freedom of worship cannot be violated," Macron wrote on the X network in his first comment on the murder on Friday, April 25, expressing support for fellow Muslim citizens.
The attacker, who is on the run, stabbed a worshipper dozens of times and then filmed him on his mobile phone while shouting insults against Islam during the attack in the village of La Grand-Combe in the Gard region.
French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou condemned the murder, describing it as an Islamophobic crime.
The alleged perpetrator sent a recorded video to another person, showing the victim writhing in agony. The video was then shared on social media and then deleted.
A source close to the investigation, who requested anonymity, said that the suspect was being sought, and that he had been "identified as a French citizen of Bosnian origin who is not Muslim," according to AFP.
The victim, a young Malian man in his 20s, and the attacker were alone in the mosque at the time of the incident.
After initially praying with the man, the attacker then stabbed the victim up to 50 times before fleeing the scene.
The victim's body was only discovered later in the morning when other worshippers arrived at the mosque for Friday prayers.
A protest "against Islamophobia" is scheduled to take place on Sunday evening in Paris.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) said it was horrified by the anti-Muslim terrorist attack and urged Muslims in France to be 'extremely vigilant'.
"The murder of a worshipper in a mosque is a despicable crime that must revolt the hearts of all French people," added the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF).
The attacker -- named only as Olivier, born in France in 2004 and unemployed with no criminal record -- is potentially extremely dangerous and it is essential to arrest him before he finds more victims, regional prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini said.
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