by WorldTribune Staff, July 26, 2016

Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) announced its role in the murder of a French priest on July 26 and the bombing near a German music festival on July 24.

ISIL claimed two of its “soldiers” entered a French church during morning mass in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray and slit a priest’s throat. A source said the jihadists shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) as they exited the church.

French President Francois Hollande said the two jihadists had pledged allegiance to ISIL before being shot dead by police. Three hostages in the church were released unharmed and a fourth person was hospitalized in critical condition, officials said.

Dominique Lebrun, the archbishop of the nearby city of Rouen, named the priest as Jacques Hamel, who was in his 80s.

The ISIL-linked Amaq news agency, citing a “security source,” said the perpetrators were “soldiers of the Islamic State who carried out the attack in response to calls to target countries of the Crusader coalition.”

Meanwhile, ISIL on July 26 released a video of the purported suicide bomber who detonated a backpack bomb outside a music festival in Ansbach, Germany.

The video showed the bomber, an asylum seeker from Syria identified as 27-year-old Mohammed Daleel, giving a pre-attack diatribe, vowing Germans “will never sleep well again.” Daleel said the attack in Ansbach would be revenge for the “killing and displacing of Muslims.” He threatens Germans repeatedly, vowing that “next time, it won’t be [explosive] belts, but car bombs.”

The explosion injured 15 people and killed Daleel.

Frauke Köhler, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office in German city of Karlsruhe, acknowledged the video circulated by ISIL was the same one authorities found on the bomber’s mobile phone.

The July 24 attack in Ansbach was the fourth mass casualty assault on German soil in less than a week — including three involving migrants and two claimed by ISIL. The terror organization also claimed responsibility, and issued a video, of a 17-year-old ax-wielding Afghan asylum seeker who wounded five people in an attack on a Bavarian commuter train on July 18.

  Ansbach, Germany attack, ISIL claims credit for killing of French priest, Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, WorldTribune.com