Police have arrested a suspect after a gunman shot and seriously injured a Greek Orthodox priest in the French city of Lyon, according to local media, reports The Guardian.
The priest, named by French media as Nikolaos Kakavelakis, was shot at twice and seriously injured in the stomach at about 4pm local time on Saturday as he was closing the church in the city’s seventh arrondissement, police said.
The Lyon newspaper Le Progrès and other local media reported that a man answering a police description of the alleged attacker had been arrested soon after 7pm in a kebab shop in the city. There was no immediate confirmation he was the suspected attacker.
The Lyon public prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation for attempted murder, and was liaising closely with the national anti-terrorism prosecutor. The shooting has not so far been declared a terrorist attack.
BFM TV reported that the priest, aged 52, was about to leave the church’s service and that investigators were also pursuing the possibility of a “personal dispute”.
Le Monde said the hypothesis of a long-running conflict within the city’s small Greek Orthodox community – including allegations of fraud against Kakavelakis that were rejected earlier this year by a Lyon court – was being taken seriously by investigators.
The French interior ministry said police and emergency services were at the scene and advised passersby to avoid the area.
The shooting comes three days after a man armed with a knife killed three people in a church in Nice on the Côte d’Azur, and barely two weeks after teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded outside his school 20 miles north-west of Paris.
Le Progrès said neighbours in what was described as a quiet residential district told the paper they heard two shots, followed by screams of pain. The attacker had used a sawn-off shotgun, police said.
The victim was conscious when he was taken from the Greek Orthodox church on the rue du Père Chevrier to the ambulance, the paper reported, and able to tell witnesses he did not know the man who attacked him.