Muslim immigrants on Nice attack as city mourns

Residents in Nice have been mourning for the victims of a gruesome attack by a Tunisian man who killed three people in a French church, following religious and geopolitical tensions around cartoons mocking the Muslim prophet.

The attack on Thursday in which a knife-wielding Tunisian man carrying a copy of the Quran killed three people at a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice, was the third in less than two months that French authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists, including the beheading of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class after the images were re-published by satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The images, republished to mark the opening of the trial for the deadly 2015 attack against the publication, have stirred the ire of Muslims across the world who consider depictions of the prophet blasphemous.

Said Chatoui migrated to France from Morocco almost six decades ago.

Like many people within the Muslim community in Nice and across France, Chatoui has denounced the attack, expressing "disgust" and "anger" at the brutal incident, while saying he feels "victimised" by recent statements from the French president in which he vowed to protect the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad,

"We feel victimised particularly by the President's announcements, by the government's announcements because it's them provoking now. This is coming from head of state," he told the British broadcaster Sky news.

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

Authorities have labeled the attack an act of Islamist terrorism.

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