The Islamic State said on Saturday that a Tunisian man who barrelled his truck into a crowd in the French resort city of Nice was a “soldier” of the group, though the veracity of the claim couldn’t immediately be determined.
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Stephanie Simpson, communications director at the Lenval foundation for children in Nice, said five children remained in critical condition, one was in a “very bad” condition, three were on artificial respiration, one has been stabilized and one eight-year-old child remains unidentified.
Bouhlel drove a 19-ton truck through throngs of people who had gathered to watch the Bastille Day fireworks Thursday night, killing at least 84 people and injuring 202.
“He had psychological problems that caused a nervous breakdown; he would become angry, shout, break everything around him”, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel told the TF1 and France 2 channels.
Bouhlel was shot to death by police after he barreled down the crowded Promenade des Anglais for nearly a mile Friday, crushing and hitting people who had gathered to watch fireworks.
Early Friday morning, French President François Hollande slammed the “attack whose terrorist nature can not be denied”.
Women comfort each other next to tributes on the Promenade des Anglais on Saturday in Nice, France.
According to officials, there were 30,000 people on the promenade at the time of the attack.
The perpetrator was acting in response to the group’s call for attacks on citizens of countries taking part in an worldwide coalition fighting IS in its Iraqi and Syrian territories, the statements said.
The new arrests came as French President Francois Hollande met with the head of the armed forces and ministers after calling a meeting of his top security advisers in Paris.
France has begun a three-day period of national mourning.
He said the number of security forces deployed to protect the population was almost 100,000, including 53,000 police, 36,000 para-military police and 10,000 soldiers.
IS had also claimed responsibility for the multiple gun and bomb attacks in the French capital which claimed the lives of 130 people and left hundreds other injured. The truck zigzagged for two kilometres through the crowd before police bullets killed the driver and brought an end to the carnage.
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A resident of the apartment block where the family had lived until 18 months ago before they split up said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had an extreme reaction to his wife’s request for a divorce after a violent argument. Last night, speaking at the family home in Msaken, Tunisia, Bouhlel’s brother Jaber said: ‘I was with my parents when we were told Mohamed was driving the lorry. A man standing nearby said “Never here”.
