“It’s not just a church that was hit, it’s a freedom”: Nice honors its dead six years after the attack on the basilica

Six years have passed. Six years of “unfathomable distress, unfathomable sadness”, since the deadly attack that occurred in the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption basilica, in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes).

This Thursday morning, at 8 a.m. in front of the square and the imposing calm of the building, a small crowd stood, mainly made up of officials, to pay tribute to the three victims. Their names “which Nice has not forgotten” are repeated: Nadine Devillers, Vincent Loquès and Simone Barreto Silva.

On October 29, 2020, also a Thursday, the first, aged 60, went to pray in this basilica near her home. The second, sacristan, then opened the doors to allow the faithful to worship. It was then that a young Tunisian illegal, radicalized, burst into the nave, armed with three knives, including a 17-centimeter blade, and struck the parishioner seventeen times. It's 8:49 a.m. “The morning of the tragedy, Simone Barreto Silva passed in front of the basilica…