Attacks in France: latest tributes and funeral of the victims

AFP

Thursday, 29 march, 2018 06:06

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Thursday, 29 march, 2018 06:06

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“This was not the time to go for any of them”: The last respects and the funeral of four people killed by the jihadist Radouane Lakdim were held Thursday in the south-west of France, at the same time as a new aggression towards members of the military pointed out that the country remains on alert permanent.

On the place of weapons of Trèbes were lined with the coffins of three victims, fell under the bullets of the killer Radouane Ladkim. In front of the Prime minister, Edouard Philippe, ministers of the Interior Gérard Collomb and Justice Nicole Belloubet, the mayor of Villedubert, of which the first victim was originally, started, choked by grief, the solemn tribute.

“This was not the time to go for any of them,” said Marc Rofes, referring to the “tearing” of the families gathered in front of him, face serious, often in tears.

“It must stop”, launched Thierry Lefranc, come to attend the tribute, as hundreds of people gathered in this morning cold and sunny, in this small, quiet town a few kilometers from the medieval city of Carcassonne (south-west).

“In large cities, we see that (attacks) but we do not expect that to happen in a small village”, says Mr. Lefranc, who was well acquainted with the butcher, killed by the jihadist in the attacks on Friday.

A few moments before the ceremony, a man drove his car onto members of the military who were doing their jogging in the vicinity of a barracks near the French Alps, but there were no casualties. The man, whose motives were as yet unknown, has absconded.

“Upset,”

In the aftermath of the national tribute made in Paris, the colonel of the gendarmerie, Arnaud Beltrame, killed after being substituted for a hostage, the families of the other victims -John Mazières, 61 years old, Christian Medves, 50 years old, and Howard Sosna, 65 years of age – have put white roses on the three coffins, with the authorities, before echoes of the Marseillaise.

Radouane Lakdim was first killed Jean Mazières, shot dead in a car parked on a wooded land of Carcassonne. The driver, of Portuguese nationality, has been shot in the head. It is still in a serious condition.

The killer of 25 years, who claims the group islamic State, then went to the supermarket Super U of Trèbes and killed immediately, near the check-outs an employee, Christian Medves, head butcher of Italian descent, a father of two girls, bon vivant and accomplished athlete, as well as a client, Howard Sosna, mason retired.

After the tribute from Trebes, the two ministers, this time without the Prime minister will travel to Carcassonne and visit the Space information and support to the victims before attending the mass funeral of colonel Arnaud Beltrame in the cathedral of Saint-Michel.

Aged 44 years old, married without child, the colonel Beltrame has been mortally wounded in the neck by Lakdim, shot dead during the assault of the GIGN, the elite unit of the gendarmerie.

Around the cathedral of Carcassonne, in the heart of the ramparts of the citadel, Alix, wife of a police commander, has come “to honor the gesture of the colonel”. “I am also here to France,” added the sexagenarian, “when I learned about his death, I was upset, I cried like a madeleine.”

“His greatness has stunned France”, had said on Wednesday the Invalid Emmanuel Macron in front of the coffin of a policeman covered by a French flag. Her funeral mass will be celebrated in the afternoon at Ferrals, in the Corbières region, where he resided.