“Magnanville killing. Those who have the vocation to protect us have been targeted”. With this Tweet posted early this morning, Mgr. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, Secretary General of the French Bishops’ Conference, expressed the shock of the French Bishops at the news of the murder of a police officer and his partner in Magnanville, a suburb of Paris. “Our prayers – he added – are with the victims and those who mourn them”. The double murder was carried out by a man who barricaded himself inside his victims’ home after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. At about midnight, after negotiations failed, French special forces stormed the house. They killed the attacker and discovered the body of the woman, who herself was a police officer, rescuing the three-year-old son of the couple. The Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency has claimed responsibility for the attack. “An Islamic State fighter has stabbed to death an officer of the police station of Les Mureaux and his wife near Paris”, Amaq wrote, as reported by terror monitoring group SITE. The counter-terrorism unit was placed in charge of the investigation. The Minister for Internal Affairs, Bernard Cazeneuve, initially said the killer’s motives were unclear, but then spoke of “an appalling terrorist act” after an emergency government meeting. According to a judicial source cited by Le Monde, the investigation will be led by the counter-terrorism unit for three main reasons: the target (police); the attacker’s “modus operandi”; and the “words uttered by him” during negotiations with the special forces.