PARIS (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, two armed men took five people hostage at the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray church in Normandy. The attackers were later killed. French President Francois Hollande said that the incident was a terrorist attack, adding that the attackers considered themselves to be fighters for the Daesh militant group.
According to the iTele broadcaster, one of the attackers tried to go to Syria via Turkey in 2015 but was detained and extradited to France, where he was put in prison.
The broadcaster added that the arrested attacker was released on March 2 but was ordered by a court to wear an electronic tracking device.
Daesh is a radical Sunni group notorious for its human rights abuses, which has claimed responsibility for a number of major terrorist attacks staged in different parts of the world. The jihadist group is outlawed in a number of countries, including Russia.
