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Priest stabbed in Turkey


A French Catholic priest is recovering in hospital after being stabbed yesterday in a busy street in the Turkish Black Sea port of Samsun. Father Pierre Brunissen, 74 was stabbed in the hip and leg and rushed to hospital, but a church official said his condition was not life-threatening. Police detained an unnamed 47-year-old man who they described as suffering from mental illness. "I hope this has nothing to with Islamic fundamentalism," Monsignor Luigi Padovese, the apostolic vicar for Anatolia, said yesterday. Fr Pierre is the third priest to have been attacked in recent months. An Italian priest Fr Andrea Santoro, 60, was shot dead in his church in the northern town of Trabzon in February. A 16-year-old boy has been charged with the priest's death. Witnesses said the youth yelled "God is great" in Arabic before firing two bullets into Santoro's back. Another priest, a Slovenian, was grabbed by the throat, thrown into a garden and received death threats during an attack recently in the port of Izmir.

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