French national guard created as second church attacker identified

French investigators have formally identified the second of the attackers who took five people hostage and killed a priest in the northern French town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray on Tuesday.The news came as French President François Hollande officially announced the creation of a new National Guard.

From left to right: Nicolas Sarkozy, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Claude Bartolone, Gérard Larcher, Manuel Valls and François Hollande attend a mass at Notre-Dame de Paris on 27 July, 2016 in honour of a slain priest Reuters

The second jihadist had tried to travel to Syria, French prosecutors said on Thursday. The prosecutor's office said 19-year-old Abdel Malik Petitjean was listed on France's "Fiche S" of people posing a potential threat to national security in June after trying to reach Syria from Turkey.

Petitjean had been harder to identify than his accomplice, Adel Kermiche, also 19, because his face was disfigured after being gunned down by police. Investigators confirmed his identity after a DNA match with his mother.

The two young jihadists were shown pledging allegiance to the Islamic State armed group in a video sometime before they stormed a church and slit the 86-year-old priest's throat.

The attack came amid criticism over perceived government security failings after the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice two weeks ago. That attack killed 84 people.

On Wednesday a French internal affairs probe ordered by French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve found that security was adequate. The head of the national police internal affairs division, Marie-France Moneger-Guyomarc'h, described the disaccord as "the result of poor understanding and interpretation of information."

A brief show of political unity at a mass attended by different faiths in Paris on Wednesday evening at Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral quickly dissolved as Cazeneuve and Prime Minister Manuel Valls faced more calls to resign.

French government implements additional security measures

The French government has tried to assure the country that everything possible is being done to protect citizens, while warning that more terror attacks are inevitable, after three major strikes and several smaller attacks in the last 18 months.

On Thursday French President François Hollande announced in a statement the creation of a new national guard formed from existing reserve forces. Hollande said parliamentary consultations on the formation of the force would take place in September "so that this force can be created as fast as possible to protect the French".