French police attacker pledged allegiance to IS

PARIS (AP):

A man who stabbed a police commander and police administrator to death at their home in a Paris suburb pledged loyalty to the leader of the Islamic State (IS) group and had a list of other targets, including rappers, journalists, police officers and public officials, the Paris prosecutor said Tuesday.

Prosecutor Francois Molins said attacker Larossi Abballa made the declaration of allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in exchanges with officers during a three-hour stand-off Monday night in the suburb of Magnanville, about 35 miles west of Paris. He was eventually killed by police.

Abballa was responding to IS calls to "kill non-believers where they live", and with their families, Molins said. IS news agency Amaq cited an unnamed source as saying an IS fighter carried out the attack and prosecutor's office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said French authorities have "no reason" to doubt the claim.

Molins said Abballa stabbed Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, a police commander in the Paris suburb of Les Mureaux, outside his home. He then went inside and took Salvaing's partner and three-year-old son hostage. He killed the woman, who was a police administrator in the suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, but did not harm the boy, Molins said.

Abballa recorded a 12-minute video related to the attack and posted it on Facebook, Molins said.

French President Francois Hollande said it was "incontestably a terrorist act" and that France faces a threat "of a very large scale".