Turkey condemns shooting in France's Lyon

Turkey said on Saturday that it "strongly" condemned a shooting of a Greek Orthodox priest in the French city of Lyon.

"We strongly condemn the shooting targeting this time an Orthodox cleric in Lyon, France. We hope that the clergyman, who was seriously injured in the attack, will recover as soon as possible and that such attacks will come to an end," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Nikolaos Kakavelaki, a 52-year-old Greek Orthodox priest, was closing his church in Lyon mid-afternoon on Saturday when he was shot twice in the chest at point-blank range.

"As a country that has been fighting against all kinds of terrorism for years, we once again express our solidarity against terrorism, while conveying our sympathies to the French people and the Orthodox community living in France," the ministry said.

The shooting comes two days after a knife attack at a Catholic church in the French city of Nice that killed three people. A knife-wielding attacker killed three people, including one woman who had her throat slit, in a suspected terrorist act at a church on Thursday, while a gunman was shot dead by police in a separate incident in Montfavet near Avignon.