Police at the church
The 2016 Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray church attack was an Islamic State terrorist attack that targeted a church in the town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy in northern France. At 9:43 AM on 26 July 2016, two men wielding knives entered the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray during mass and took the priest, two nuns, and two churchgoers hostage. The 86-year-old priest, Jacques Hamel, was murdered by the attackers, who slit his throat after yelling "Daesh" (the Arabic acronym for ISIS). One of the hostages managed to flee, and police were alerted to the hostage crisis. At 11:00 AM, police stormed the church and killed the two gunmen. The attackers had killed one man and wounded three before they went out fighting, and the Islamic State claimed that two of its "soldiers" carried out the attack; one, Abu Jalil al-Hanfai, was a local who had failed to enter Syria in 2015. Later on 26 July, one attacker was identified as Adel Kermiche, a 19-year-old French Muslim who had been known to authorities as an Islamic State sympathizer and was tracked with an electronic chip inserted into him. On 27 July, the Islamic State released a video showing the two attackers pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, with the other attacker being identified as Abu Jalil al-Hanfai.