An attacker armed with a knife killed three people at a church Thursday in the French city of Nice, authorities said, and hours later police in the southern city of Avignon shot dead another man for threatening passersby with a knife.
The assailant in Nice was wounded by police and hospitalized after the murders at the Notre Dame Church, less than a kilometer (half-mile) from the site in 2016 where another attacker plowed a truck into a Bastille Day crowd, killing dozens.
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Thursday's attacker was believed to be acting alone and police are not searching for other assailants, said two police officials, who were not authorized to be publicly named.
France's anti-terrorism prosecutor's office opened an investigation into the killings, which marked the third attack since the opening in September of a terrorism trial in the January 2015 killings at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
"He cried 'Allahu Akbar!' over and over, even after he was injured," said Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, who told BFM television that three people had died, two inside the church and a third who fled but was mortally wounded. "The meaning of his gesture left no doubt."
Just hours later, meanwhile, French police shot dead the man shouting "Allahu Akhbar" in Avignon, after he threatened passersby with a knife. It was still unclear whether the Avignon and Nice incidents were related.
It is believed the man is of Turkish origin, according to early local reports.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been the most vocal critic of France and French President Emmanuel Macron, said on Wednesday that Western countries mocking Islam wanted to "relaunch the Crusades."
Furthering Turkish anger, Charlie Hebdo published a cartoon on its cover showing Erdogan sitting in a white t-shirt and underpants, holding a canned drink and lifting the skirt of a woman wearing an Islamic hijab to reveal her naked bottom.
Turkish officials said Ankara would take legal and diplomatic steps in response to the caricature, calling it a "disgusting effort" to "spread its cultural racism and hatred".
The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the charge d'affaires at the French embassy over the magazine cover.
Macron, for his part, has vowed a heavy hand against "Islamist separatism" and has promised to protect freedom of speech and expression in his country.
In Nice, images on French media showed the neighborhood locked down and surrounded by police and emergency vehicles. Sounds of explosions could be heard as sappers exploded suspicious objects.
The lower house of the French parliament suspended a debate on France's new virus restrictions and held a moment of silence Thursday for the victims. The prime minister rushed from the hall to a crisis center overseeing the aftermath of the Nice attack. Macron was headed to Nice later in the day.
Less than two weeks ago, an assailant decapitated a French middle school teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed for a class on free speech. Those caricatures were published by Charlie Hebdo magazine and cited by the men who gunned down the newspaper's editorial meeting in 2015.
In September, a man who had sought asylum in France attacked bystanders outside the magazine's former offices with a butcher knife.
Also Thursday, a Saudi man stabbed and slightly wounded a guard at the French Consulate in the city of Jiddah, Saudi Arabia's state media reported.
The Saudi Press Agency offered no immediate motive for the attack in the Red Sea port city.
The report, citing police spokesman Maj. Mohammed al-Ghamdi, said the special force for diplomatic security was able to arrest the Saudi man. He is said to be in his 40s. The guard was taken to a hospital for treatment, the agency said.
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