A Frenchman who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State fatally stabbed a police chief and killed his wife at their home in a Paris suburb Monday evening while broadcasting the attack live to Facebook.
Larossi Abballa, 25, claimed in the 13-minute video that he was answering calls from ISIS to carry out lone wolf attacks during Ramadan, the Telegraph reported.
Abballa was convicted in 2013 of recruiting jihadist fighters. He was sentenced to three years in prison, six months of which were suspended, for association with a terrorist organization.
The 42-year-old police chief was in civilian clothing when he was fatally stabbed nine times in the stomach outside of his home in Magnanville, about 35 miles north-west of Paris. The attacker then broke into the home and held the commander’s partner and 3-year-old son hostage.
Elite police squads stormed the house and killed Abballa during the raid. They found the woman, who also worked for the police, dead with knife slits in her neck. The 3-year-old child was unharmed.
French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that the attack was "incontestably a terrorist attack," adding that France faces a terror threat "of a very large scale."
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement released by the Amaq News Agency, the group’s propaganda outlet.
"Islamic State fighter kills deputy chief of the police station in the city of Les Mureaux and his wife with blade weapons," the statement said, according to the New York Times.
Two people close to Abballa were detained in the investigation.
A French prosecutor said that Abballa had a list of targets, including "rappers, journalists, police officers, and public personalities."
The attack arrived one day after 49 people were killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a man who pledged allegiance to ISIS. The attack was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.