An attack on a retirement home for missionaries that left one woman dead in southern France is not linked to terrorism, French public prosecutor Christophe Barret said on Friday. The suspect has been identified but remains at large.
A hooded man wielding a knife murdered a woman at a retirement home for missionaries in southern France on Thursday triggering a manhunt, with the country still on edge following a string of jihadist attacks.
The man, brandishing a sawn-off shotgun and a knife, tied up and killed the woman who worked at the home in the village of Montferrier-sur-Lez near the city of Montpellier, a prosecutor said.
Armed police searched the building but believe the man fled, sources close to the police operation said, and a large-scale police operation was under way to find the unidentified attacker.
"For the time being, there is only one victim," Montpellier prosecutor Christophe Barret told AFP. "For the moment there is no particular evidence about the motive for this crime."
"Nothing is pointing towards the motive" of the killer, he added.
The man was not known to authorities.
The secretary general of the French Bishops' Conference, Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, said in a Twitter message: "Our prayers tonight go to the woman who lost her life in this attack on a retirement home."
France is under a state of emergency that gives security forces enhanced powers of surveillance and arrest. Earlier this year two jihadists in their 20s claiming to be IS followers slit the throat of 84-year-old priest Jacques Hamel at a church near the northern city of Rouen.
(Edited from France 24)
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