A man who stabbed a police commander and police administrator to death at their home in a Paris suburb pledged loyalty to the leader of the Islamic State group and had a list of other targets, including rappers, journalists, police officers and public officials, the Paris prosecutor said Tuesday.
Prosecutor Francois Molins said attacker Larossi Abballa made the declaration of allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in exchanges with officers during a three-hour standoff Monday night in the suburb of Magnanville, about 35 miles 55 kilometers west of Paris.
He was eventually killed by police. Abballa was responding to IS calls to "kill non-believers where they live," and with their families, Molins said. IS news agency Amaq cited an unnamed source as saying an IS fighter carried out the attack and prosecutor's office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said French authorities have "no reason" to doubt the claim. He then went inside and took Salvaing's partner and 3-year-old son hostage. He killed the woman, who was a police administrator in the suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, but did not harm the boy, Molins said.
Abballa recorded a minute video related to the attack and posted it on Facebook, Molins said, but he did not provide further details or confirm an earlier report from a police official who said Abballa posted the video on Facebook's live-streaming service, Facebook Live. Molins said three people โages 27, 29 and 44 โ were detained Tuesday in the investigation. He did not provide any other details. French President Francois Hollande said earlier Tuesday that it was "incontestably a terrorist act" and that France faces a threat "of a very large scale.
The country has been on particularly high alert as it hosts Europe's top sporting event, the monthlong European Championship soccer tournament, and is still under a state of emergency after the November IS attacks in Paris that killed people.
