Father Jacques Hamel had his throat slit at the foot of the altar while celebrating mass on July 26, 2016, at his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a working-class suburb of Rouen in northwest France.
The two 19-year-old assailants, Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, also seriously injured one of the worshippers they took hostage before being shot and killed by police as they tried to leave the church.
They claimed in a video to be members of the Islamic State, which later called them its “soldiers” retaliating for France’s fight against jihadists in Syria and Iraq.
Hamel’s murder came as the country was on high alert over a series of jihadist attacks that began with a massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and which have claimed more than 250 lives in total
https://amp.france24.com/en/europe/20220214-four-suspects-go-on-trial-over-jihadist-murder-of-french-priest
