World reacts to France, Tunisia, Kuwait attacks

World leaders and institutions condemned on Friday a series of deadly attacks in France, Tunisia, and Kuwait, where attacks from suspected Islamist militants have killed dozens and left hundreds wounded.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said those “responsible for such appalling acts of violence must be swiftly brought to justice” and Interpol offered its help to all three nations.

“The members of the Security Council underlined the need to bring perpetrators of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice,” the 15-member body said in a statement.

“Far from weakening the international community’s resolve to fight the scourge of terrorism, these heinous attacks will only strengthen the commitment of the United Nations to help defeat those bent on murder, destruction and the annihilation of human development and culture,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said.

The White House in a statement on Thursday condemned the three “terrorist” attacks, calling them “heinous.”

Germany stands united with France against “terror’s blind hate” and in defence of “free society”, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after a deadly attack Friday at a factory near Lyon.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said he was “sickened” by the attacks, and expressed solidarity the three countries.

“I firmly condemn the attack carried out in Lyon. Barbarism will always be confronted by unity among democrats. #Spain with #France,” Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy wrote in a message on Twitter.

Cairo’s Al-Azhar, considered to be the highest Sunni Islamic body, calling for the international community to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which claimed responsibility for an attack on Shiite Mosque in Kuwait.

“Al-Azhar calls on the international community to defeat this terrorist group though all available means,” it said in a statement referring to ISIS.

A task force against extremism set up by Egypt’s mufti, the government’s interpreter of Islamic law, also denounced the attacks.
“What the (Islamic State) has done to malign the image of Islam is far more than what anyone else has done, whether Muslim or non-Muslim,” it said in a statement.

A gunman killed at least 37 people and wounded dozens more in an attack on a beach resort in Tunisia Friday.

In Kuwait, a suicide bomber killed at least 25 people, while a man with suspected ties to French Islamic radicals rammed a car into a gas factory in southeastern France, triggering an explosion that injured two people. The severed head of a local businessman was left hanging at the factory’s entrance.

Meanwhile, a Pentagon spokesman says it is too early to say if the three attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and France were coordinated.

(With AP, AFP, and Reuters)