ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

The two Islamic State soldiers who murdered a French Priest used nuns as as human shields against anti-terrorism police.

One was carrying three knives and a fake explosives belt, while the other carried a kitchen timer wrapped in aluminum foil and had fake explosives in his backpack.

Police have identified one of the assailants as Adel Kermiche, a 19-year-old who grew up in the town and tried to travel to Syria twice last year using family members' identity documents.

The teenager was arrested outside France and put under house arrest with an electronic surveillance.

However, the bracelet was deactivated for a few hours every morning as part of the surveillance agreement - hours that corresponded to the time of Tuesday's attack.

A nun, identified as Sister Danielle, described how Father Hamel was forced to kneel on the floor before his throat was slit during the hour-long hostage-taking incident which began as the two knifemen burst into the parish church by a back door during morning mass.

She said: "They forced him to his knees. He wanted to defend himself. And that's when the tragedy happened.

"They recorded themselves. They did a sort of sermon around the altar, in Arabic. It's a horror," she told BFM television.

Sister Danielle went on to describe the minister as a "great priest".

The brutal killing was the extremist group's first attack against a church in the West.

To attack a church, to kill a priest, is to profane the republic," French President Francois Hollande told the nation after speaking with Pope Francis, who condemned the killing in the strongest terms.

The Rev Jacques Hamel was celebrating Mass for three nuns and two parishioners on a quiet summer morning in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray when the attackers burst in and forced the 84-year-old priest to his knees before slicing his throat.