Heartbreaking: Carrying knives to 2 churches slashed wildly, leaving 1 dead and many injured

One person has died and several have been injured after a stab attack occurred in two churches in Algeciras. The assailant was detained by the National Police and taken to his home to practice a search. Police sources advanced to El Confidencial who is about a Moroccan citizen, identified with the name of Yassine Kanjaa, 25 years old.

The National Court was the first to refer to the events as jihadism. At least those are the characteristics of the event that had arrived at the Prosecutor's Office of that court, competent in matters of terrorism, at 9:00 p.m. This despite the fact that after comparing the data, the detainee had no history of Islamism.

This newspaper has been able to confirm by several sources involved in the investigation several photos related to the event. In one of them a large machete can be seen on the ground with traces of blood. A misbaha has appeared on the same ground. They are a series of beads joined by a thread traditionally used among the faithful of the Islamic religion to keep track of the number of repetitions of the tasbih. It is an object similar to a rosary.

The man was wearing a white, black and gray tracksuit. In the photo that this newspaper has had access to, he can be seen with traces of blood on his pants. On the detainee's face , a smile could be seen on his face .

The Ministry of the Interior advanced a first version of the events early in the evening, but asked for caution regarding the motivation of the arrested person. As the minutes passed, the versions agreed that the young man first went to the Church of San Isidro, where he argued with those present and demanded that they follow Islam. I have returned an hour later to the same place with a machete and seriously injured the priest. Later he went to the Church of La Palma and there I've stabbed to death his fatal victim, a sacristan. He still had time to seek refuge in a hermitage, where the Police detained him.


The specialists in the investigation of terrorist crimes began to collect data on what happened as soon as they became aware of the facts. Police sources add that the detainee also caused damage to religious objects. The impression from the first moment of the police professionals consulted by this newspaper is that the etiology is of a terrorist nature.


The deceased is a sacristan known in the area and the serious injury is the priest , according to sources from the Government Delegation, which delimited the serious events to the Church of San Isidro. Neighbors in the area say they knew the deceased. They say that he was a regular at carnivals and Holy Week and had a flower shop located on Tarifa street in the city.

The stabbed priest is called Antonio Rodríguez. After 23 hours he was out of danger after having undergone surgery . This was stated by the mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce, who explained that he "has already left the operating room" at the Punta de Europa hospital, to which he was transferred in an ambulance. The mayor maintained that "if all goes well, in the next few hours he could even be discharged."