Three people were stabbed to death - two of them beheaded - at a church in the city of Nice

A knifeman shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ was shot dead by police in the city of Avignon

A security guard at the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was stabbed and wounded

A man armed with a knife was arrested in Sartrouville near a church after vowing ‘to do as in Nice’

An Afghan man was arrested in Lyon trying to board a train while armed with a long knife

In the Nice attack, the first victim - a woman in her seventies - was attacked after coming there early to pray and was found ‘almost beheaded’ close to the
church font.

The 45-year-old sacristan, Vincent Loques, a father-of-two, was then attacked andalso beheaded.

A third woman - described as of African origin and aged in her 30s - was then stabbed ‘multiple times’ and managed to flee to a bar across the street, where she died.

Police were called and arrived at 9.10am. They stormed the basilica, shooting and arresting the attacker.

The attacker is a 21-year-old Tunisian who is thought to have arrived in France via Italy, after being smuggled across the Mediterranean.

Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi said the attaker Aoussaoui ‘kept shouting Allahu Akbar, and that ‘the meaning of his gesture is not in doubt’.

‘Enough is enough,’ he said. ‘It’s time now for France to exonerate itself from the laws of peace in order to definitively wipe out Islamo-fascism from our territory.’

Estrosi said the victims had been killed in a ‘horrible way’. ‘The methods in Paris’.

In Sartrouville, north of Paris, a man was arrested around 1pm after his father called police and said his son had left home and planned ‘to do as in Nice.’

Police stopped the man in his car near a local church, he was in possession of a knife..

Meanwhile in Lyon, an Afghan man in his 20s was arrested while trying to board a tram carrying a long knife. The man was known to French intelligence services.

In Avignon, a man armed with a handgun began threatening people in the Montfavet around 11.15am while shouting Allahu Akbar.

Police rushed to the scene and confronted the man, who refused to drop his weapon.Police then shot the man with a Taser, which failed to stop him, so they opened fire with live ammunition, killing him.

Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, a man was arrested after stabbing a guard at the French consulate with ‘a sharp tool’. The attacker was arrested while the guard was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

France’s embassy in Riyadh condemned the ‘attack on diplomatic premises which can never be justified’.

Saudi Arabia ‘strongly condemned’ deadly stabbings Thursday in the French city of Nice, which authorities are investigating as the latest terrorist attack in France..

‘We strongly condemn and denounce the terrorist attack that occurred… in Nice,France, which resulted in the death and injury of a number of people,’ the Saudi foreign ministry said on Twitter.

‘We reiterate the kingdom’s categorical rejection of such extremist acts that are inconsistent with all religions, human beliefs and common sense, and we affirm the importance of rejecting practices that generate hatred,

The attack is just the latest to strike France, after history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in another attack north of Paris. After he showed the cartoons to his students during a lesson on free speech.