Qatar yesterday strongly condemned an attack which took place in a Paris suburb, causing the death of a police officer and his wife.
In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said “these criminal acts contradict all human values and principles and aim to undermine peace and security”, stressing “the need for concerted international efforts to face this phenomenon”.
The statement reiterated Qatar’s firm stance of “rejecting violence and terrorism in all their manifestations and forms and whatever their source”.
On Monday night, a Frenchman who pledged allegiance to the militant Islamic State group stabbed a police commander to death outside his home and killed his partner, who also worked for the police, in an attack the French government denounced as “an abject act of terrorism”.
Larossi Abballa, 25, also took the couple’s three-year-old son hostage in the attack.
The boy was found unharmed but in a state of shock after police commandos stormed the house and killed the attacker.
Born in France of Moroccan origin, Abballa was jailed in 2013 for helping militants go to Pakistan and had been under security service surveillance, including wiretaps, at the time of the attack, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.
The attacker told police negotiators during the siege he had answered an appeal by Iraq-based Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “to kill infidels at home with their families”, Molins told a news conference.
Police found a bloodied knife at the scene along with a list of other potential targets including rap musicians, journalists and police officers, the prosecutor said.
The killings came as France, which has been under a state of emergency since Islamic State gunmen and bombers killed 130 people in Paris last November, was on high security alert for the Euro 2016 soccer tournament, which began last Friday.
In a video posted on social networks, Abballa linked the attack to the soccer championship, saying: “The Euros will be a graveyard.”
The video had been removed from Facebook yesterday.