As we reported yesterday, the French anti-terrorism prosecutor has opened a terrorism investigation.
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Kurtulmus said that Nice attack “clearly indicates the urgent need for global solidarity and cooperation in the fight against terrorism”.
“I remember thinking, ‘That’s really odd, ‘ because this is an area that’s been closed off to road traffic, just pedestrians were using it”, Coady tells NPR.
“I thought it could either be a drunk driver or a terror attack, until that incredibly fearless man jumped on the truck”, he said.
She added the message: “As you bury your loved ones this week, please know that there are millions of us sending you love and our deepest sympathy in the face of this unthinkable and devastating tragedy”.
“It was absolute chaos”, Holloway said.
“To have people celebrating Bastille Day and then this happens is horrendous”.
On Friday, flags will be flying at half-mast, and Nice’s jazz festival has been cancelled. “People were literally diving for their lives”, Drattell says.
President Francois Hollande has requested a three-month extension of state-of-emergency protocols that were put in place after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November of a year ago, following the Nice tragedy. Speaking after an emergency meeting, Valls said the national mourning would begin Saturday.
In the early hours of Friday morning Francois Hollande said France was “badly hit” by the attack but said “we need to do everything we can to fight against” such attacks. A motive for the attack is not yet clear.
Investigators are still working to determine what weapons – besides the truck – the attacker might have used. Police investigating the attack have detained his ex-wife.
He said the act was done “to satisfy the cruelty of an individual, and maybe a group” and that France was “facing a struggle which will be long” because the enemy will continue to attack.
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Witnesses said the lorry “zig-zagged” down the street and that the driver shot at police. He hails from the town of Msaken – ten miles from Sousse, where an ISIS-claimed attack killed 39 people at a beach resort previous year.
