PARIS — A nun who was in a small-town French church during a terror attack said the 86-year-old priest resisted when he was forced to the ground before his throat was slit.

“They forced him to his knees. He wanted to defend himself. And that’s when the tragedy happened,” said the nun, identified as Sister Danielle.

“They recorded themselves. They did a sort of sermon around the altar, in Arabic. It’s a horror,” she told BFM television.

Of her fallen colleague, she said: “He was a great priest.”

Two attackers seized hostages Tuesday in the church near the Normandy city of Rouen, killing the priest before being shot and killed by police, French officials said.

Another person inside the church was seriously injured and is hovering between life and death, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.

President François Hollande called it a “vile terrorist attack” and said it’s another more sign that France is at war with Daesh, also known as Islamic State, which has claimed a string of attacks on France.

“We must remain united,” Hollande said on France Info radio. “We are faced with the Islamic State which has declared war on us.”

The Paris prosecutor’s office says one person has been detained in the investigation,

Police managed to rescue three people from the church in the small northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Brandet said. The hostage-taking occurred during morning mass, he told reporters.

The identities of the attackers and motive for the attack are unclear, according to a security official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.

Tuesday’s slaying inside a church “is obviously a drama for the Catholic community, for the Christian community,” Brandet told reporters.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/07/26/hostage-killed-in-france-church-attack.html