2020 Nice stabbing

On 29 October 2020, three people were Stabbed and killed in an attack in a Roman Catholic church in Nice, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France. The attack happened between 8:50 and 9:00 AM local time.  The mayor of Nice said that this was a terrorist attack. He called it "islamist terrorism". The attacker was an 21 year old Tunisian. The three people killed were a seventy-year-old woman,  a woman in her thirties and a member of the clergy.  The woman in her thirties was able to leave the church but she died soon after the attack in a nearby restaurant. Local police entered the church and fought with the attacker. The policemen used tasers before they shot him. The attacker was taken to a nearby hospital.  

The attacker was a 21 year old man from Tunisia. He had entered Italy from Lampedusa in late September 2020. The man had travelled to Bari, Apulia on 9 October. He got to France in mid October 2020. He has not asked for asylum in France. This attack happened about a week after another attack. In the earlier attack, a teacher was stabbed after showing cartoons of Muhammad. On February 26, 2025, Brahim Aouissaoui, the perpetrator of the 2020 Nice knife attack, was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

 Reactions 
Turkey wished condolences to the families of the people who were killed. 

 Other attacks 
On the same day, there were two other incidents involving France . In the first incident, an attacker threatened to shoot people near Avignon. There was also an attack on the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After these attacks, the French state raised its security alert to the maximum level.

 Analysis 
Marc Hecker, an expert on terrorism, has analyzed this stabbing, a stabbing that happened in September in Paris and the stabbing where a teacher was targeted. He said that the attacks are probably related to the republication of Muhammad cartoons by Chartlie Hebdo. These cartoons have caused resentment in many Islamic countries.  Wassim Nasr, a journalist who deals with Islamic jihadism, said  that it is not political jihad which motivates these attacks: "These people feel attacked in their faith, but do not have a political project as such, such as dividing French society or the departure of the French armies from the Sahel. On the other hand, the fact that they act alone and without ties to the jihadist sphere makes their surveillance almost impossible."

 References 

Category:2020 in France
Category:Islamic terrorist incidents in France
2020 stabbing
Category:October 2020 events
Category:Terrorist incidents in Europe in 2020