Third suspect arrested after Nice terror attack

Issaoui, who transited through Italy last month en route to France, is in a critical condition in a French hospital after being wounded by police as they arrested him.

CCTV showed the suspect arriving in the church at 8.30am on the day of the attack and sitting inside for nearly half an hour.

Armed officers were seen storming the church before he was cornered and shot in the shoulder.

He allegedly shouted “Allahu akbar” – Arabic for “God is greater” – as paramedics treated him before he was taken to hospital.

Investigators in France, Tunisia and Italy are trying to determine the motive of chief suspect Ibrahim Issaoui and whether he acted alone and whether his attack on Notre Dame Church on Thursday was premeditated.

Authorities have labelled the attack, which took place amid growing tensions around cartoons published by a French newspaper mocking the Prophet Muhammad, an act of Islamist terrorism.

A 35-year-old man who met Issaoui in Nice was arrested overnight, a judicial official said on Saturday.

A 47-year-old man who met Issaoui the night before the attack was already in custody, taking the number of detained suspects to three. Their connection to the attack remains unclear.

A previously unknown Tunisian extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack, and Tunisian and French authorities are investigating whether the claim is legitimate.

In Issaoui’s hometown of Sfax, his family expressed shock and appealed for peace. But they also expressed bewilderment that the young man who drank alcohol and showed no outward signs of radicalism would flee to France and attack a church.

“We want the truth about how my son carried out this terrorist attack. I want to see what the surveillance cameras showed. I will not give up my son’s rights outside the country. I want my son, dead or alive,” his mother, Gamra, told the Associated Press, her words often interrupted by tears.

Issaoui’s father and brother Wissem said that if he did indeed carry out the attack, he should face justice.

“We are Muslims, we are against terrorism, we are poor. Show me that my brother committed the attack and judge him as a terrorist,” Wissem said. “If he was the attacker, he will take his responsibility.”

Simone Barreto Silva was stabbed several times inside Nice’s Notre Dame basilica as the Tunisian attacker Brahim Aouissaoui went on a rampage, “virtually beheading” another woman and also killing the 55-year-old sacristan Vincent Loquès.

Ms Barreto, 44, a mother of three, managed to run to a nearby burger bar but died there from her injuries, using her last words to ask parademics: “Tell my children that I love them.”

Additonal reporting from AP.