The man who killed a French police couple at their home near Paris was acting on an order from so-called Islamic State (IS) to “kill infidels”, officials say.<\/p>\n
Larossi Abballa, who was killed in a shootout with police, was loyal to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, they said.<\/p>\n
A police commander and his partner were stabbed to death at their home. Their three-year-old son survived.
\nIS has put out a video showing Abballa confessing to the killings.<\/p>\n
The 11-minute video, on the IS news agency Amaq, apparently shows him in the home of the couple before police stormed in.<\/p>\n
In it Abballa, 25, urged Muslims in France to target police officers, prison guards, journalists, politicians and mayors. He named several prominent French journalists.<\/p>\n
The video is apparently the same as one that Abballa posted on Facebook Live, hours before police killed him, in which he swore allegiance to IS.<\/p>\n
Abballa’s crime was “a terrorist act”, President Francois Hollande said, and France still faced “a significant threat”.<\/p>\n
The attack happened in Magnanville, about 55km (35 miles) north-west of the French capital.<\/p>\n
During negotiations prior to the police assault on Monday, Abballa said he had pledged his loyalty to the IS leader three weeks earlier.<\/p>\n
When police stormed in they killed Abballa and found the dead woman, who had been stabbed. The little boy was in a state of shock.<\/p>\n
French media are naming them as Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, and Jessica Schneider, 36.<\/p>\n
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the attack “a watershed in terms of horror – the home, the intimate life of a family, of a couple of civil servants, was targeted”.<\/p>\n
In 2013, Abballa was jailed for recruiting fighters for jihad in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
He had been under recent police surveillance, including a wiretap. Three people linked to Abballa have been arrested and placed in custody.<\/p>\n
In the video – later removed from Facebook – Abballa considers what to do with the couple’s son, according to French jihad expert David Thomson, who watched it.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with him,” the killer is heard saying.<\/p>\n
He also made a threatening reference to the Euro 2016 football tournament.<\/p>\n
France has been under a state of emergency since the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015 in which IS jihadists killed 130 people.<\/p>\n
That state of emergency is still in place. France is on high alert as it hosts the Euro tournament, which started last Friday.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The man who killed a French police couple at their home near Paris was acting on an order from so-called Islamic State (IS) to “kill infidels”, officials say. Larossi Abballa, who was killed in a shootout with police, was loyal to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, they said. A police commander and his partner were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":222374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n