1 year ago
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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A machete-wielding antheral killed a sexton and injured a clergyman astatine 2 Catholic churches successful the metropolis of Algeciras connected Wednesday earlier being arrested, Spain’s interior ministry said. Authorities are investigating the attacks arsenic a imaginable enactment of terrorism.
The fishy is successful the custody of Spain’s National Police. The ministry did not place him.
Algeciras is adjacent the confederate extremity of Spain, resting crossed from a bay from Gibraltar. It is location to an important larboard with ferry connections to bluish Africa.
The onslaught started astir 7 p.m., erstwhile an equipped antheral went into the religion of Maria Auxiliadora y San Isidro and assaulted a priest, who was earnestly injured, the ministry said.
The assailant past went to a 2nd church, Nuestra Señora de La Palma, a five-minute locomotion away, wherever helium attacked the sexton. The sexton, whose occupation it is to instrumentality attraction of the church, fled extracurricular to a nationalist square, wherever the attacker dealt him mortal wounds, the ministry said.
The Algeciras municipality hallway said the sexton was named Diego Valencia and identified the wounded clergyman arsenic Antonio Rodríguez. The municipality hallway said helium was hospitalized and successful unchangeable condition.
Local media reported that astatine slightest 3 different radical were injured.
Spain’s National Court said a justice has opened an probe into a imaginable enactment of terrorism.
Police are investigating the incident, the interior ministry said, to find the “nature of the attack.” It offered nary item connected the attacker’s motive.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez joined the outpouring of support.
“I privation to explicit my sincerest condolences for the families of the sexton slain successful the unspeakable onslaught successful Algeciras,” Sánchez wrote connected Twitter. “I privation the injured a swift recovery.”
The caput wide of Spain’s Episcopal Conference, Francisco García, wrote connected Twitter that “I person received the quality of the incidental successful Algeciras with large pain.” The league is an enactment of Spain’s Catholic bishops, based successful Rome.
“These are bittersweet moments of suffering, we are agreed by the symptom of families of the victims and for the Diocese of Cádiz,” García added.
The municipality hallway declared a time of mourning erstwhile flags volition alert astatine half-staff.
“We are each stunned by these acts, which person filled america with pain,” Mayor José Landaluce said. “Algeciras has ever been a metropolis wherever concord and tolerance reign, contempt incidents similar this that make an representation that does not correspond to reality.”
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