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French press review 27 July 2016

The tragic death of a Catholic priest killed by Islamist extremists in a suburb of Rouen in northern France yesterday is the main story across this morning's French press. Father Jacques Hamel, a man in his eighties, was killed, and four other people taken hostage, by two armed men who stormed his church in Saint Etienne-du-Rouvray.

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Can we still live together?

Le Monde reports that yesterday's tragedy casts a doubt over people's ability to "live together".

According to the centrist paper, the inhabitants of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray do not want to believe that tensions between communities exist. In the old town of this industrial suburb, no one dares to think that Catholics and Muslims will no longer mingle respectfully with one another.

Le Monde quotes a pensioner called Annie who has lived for many years in the area and who said the community's strength has always been its openess to others.Her fear is that this community spirit will now be lost.

The strategy of the so-called Islamic State

The left-wing Liberation reports that the slaughter of a priest in a small Normandy town further demonstrates the willingness of the Islamic State armed group to target everywhere, all the time.

Jihadist theorists have waged a war of attrition since the early 2000s. Their dream is conflict with the "infidels."

The savage murder of Jacques Hamel, Liberation says, answers to a specific strategy of the Islamic State armed group that was already at work on July 14 with the massacre of 84 people on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, and in November last year with the Paris attacks.

This strategy is neither secret nor hidden, the paper says. By the early 2000s, jihadhist theorists had formalized and published their ideas on the internet. Their texts have been taken and adapted in publications that the so-called Islamic State has been distributing since 2014.

Their aim is to implode whats Daesch describes as "grey areas" where so-called "infidels" and Muslims live alongside one another. In the world of the so-called Islamic State, there are only two camps: the infidels and the Muslims and both must battle it out until the latter succeeds.

Why are Christians targets for Jihadhists?

The catholic La Croix looks at why Christians are the targets of Jihadhists.

Already subject to an assassination attempt in Villejuif, Val-de-Marne, last year, the Catholic Church knew that it was on the hit list. Muslim extremists, La Croix writes, consider Catholics as both "crusaders" and "infidels".

The possibility of an attack by the so-called Islamic State against a place of Christian worship had been feared in France. The Ministry of Interior and officials of the Catholic Church were worried about an attack taking place during Christmas or Easter week, both highly symbolic dates in the Christian calendar.

La Croix quotes Emmanuel Pisani, a Dominican and a director at the Catholic Institute of Paris, who says that "in some ways, the Christian symbolises Western civilization." This is one of the reasons why they are targets for Jihadhists.

The catholic paper also cites the Belgian Muslim and Islamic scholar, Michael Privot, who says that "in the imagination of Daesch, a Christian pressure on Islam has been at work since the Crusades.

"It continued with the colonisation, the presence of Christian missionaries in predominantly Muslim countries, and now with the international intervention in Iraq and Syria," La Croix quotes Privot.

Thearticle ends by saying that Christian places of worship will remain open, and urges readers to be vigilant against a hardening of the heart.

Adel Kermiche known to anti-terrorist services

And the right-wing Le Figaro reports that one of the two attackers, who were both shot dead by police, has been identified as Adel Kermiche who had twice attempted to travel to Syria and was known to the anti-terrorist services.

Kermiche was born 25 March 1997 in Mont-Saint-Aignan in France.

The first time he tried to reach Syria was via Germany in March last year, but he was arrested. He tried again in May via Switzerland and Turkey, where he was arrested again.

Kermiche was charged for criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise. He had been remanded in custody after his second attempt, and released in March this year with an electronic tag. The Paris prosecutor had appealed the release, without success.

The identity of the second attacker has not yet been released.

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