On Saturday, An attacker armed with a sawn-off shotgun seriously wounded a Greek Orthodox priest in a shooting outside a church in the French city of Lyon, with the country still reeling from a deadly church attack days before.
Nikolaos Kakavelaki, was closing his Lyon church mid-afternoon when he was attacked and is now in a serious condition in hospital, said a police source who asked not to be named.
The attacker fled the scene but Lyon’s public prosecutor later announced that a suspect had been arrested.
“A person who could correspond to the description given by the initial witnesses has been placed in policy custody,” prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet said, adding that the suspect had not been carrying a weapon when he was arrested.
The priest was shot twice in the chest at point-blank range, according to sources close to the inquiry.
“At this stage, no hypothesis is being ruled out, nor favoured,” Jacquet said.
The Lyon prosecutor’s office said in a statement that witnesses, and a passing police patrol, heard gunshots then saw an individual fleeing and discovered a man with gunshot wounds at the back door of the church.
The prosecutors said that an investigation had been launched, and it remains in close contact with the national anti-terrorist prosecution.
