French Prime Minister Francois Hollande said Friday morning local time that he would “strengthen our actions” in Syria and Iraq and extend the state of emergency another three months, hours after a truck ran into a crowd of revelers and killed at least 80 people in Nice.
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The driver was shot dead after barrelling the truck two kilometres (1.3 miles) through the festive crowd on the palm-lined Promenade des Anglais, sending hundreds fleeing in terror and leaving the area strewn with bodies.
“An individual drove a truck into the crowd”.
Christian Estrosi, the head of the regional council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, said late Thursday: “Dear Nice residents, the driver of a truck appears to have caused tens of deaths”. He added that the choice of the day – Bastille Day, when France celebrates its post-French Revolution republic – was particularly poignant.
Within minutes, the place filled with people enjoying a fireworks display as part of the celebration turned into a graveyard after the truck mowed down the crowd, killing at least 80 and injuring over 100.
A photograph showed the front of the truck riddled with bullet holes and badly damaged, with burst tyres.
While the incident in Nice appears to be deliberate, US law enforcement has no official analysis of what happened, CBS News Justice and Homeland Security correspondent Jeff Pegues reported.
“I had to protect my face from flying debris”.
The president of the region that includes Nice says a truck that slammed into revelers celebrating Bastille Day on the city’s waterfront was loaded with arms and grenades, and that the driver of the truck has now been killed by police. Even today’s attack had a surprise element in it where the weapon of choice was a truck. BFM said local authorities were treating the incident as an attack.
France was rocked by a devastating terrorist attack in November, when heavily armed suicide bombers killed 130 people in several places around Paris.
Anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating the deadly attack.
The city also canceled a concert by American pop superstar Rihanna at the city’s Allianz Riviera stadium scheduled for Friday, as well as a five-day jazz festival set to begin Friday.
“There was a lot of screams coming from ahead of us where the truck was…” “It was chaos. We hid in a restaurant but now we moved to a separate hotel”.
Daesh, known as ISIS/ISIL has called on followers to attack western targets, using cars, knives or rocks.
Both presidential candidates also condemned the attacks, with Republican Donald Trump declaring “this is war” and Democrat Hillary Clinton vowing “we will not be intimidated”.
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“FRANCE is filled with sadness by this new tragedy”, Hollande said, noting several children were among the dead in what he said he had no doubt was an act of terrorism.
