Policemen stand guard the Promenade des Anglais seafront in the French Riviera town of Nice on July 15, 2016, hours after a truck drove into a crowd watching a fireworks display, killing 84.
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At least two Americans and 10 children were among the 84 people killed in an attack with a truck on Bastille Day at the waterfront where people had gathered to watch fireworks, officials said Friday.
President Obama condemned the terror attack, while presidential hopefuls Donal Trump and Hillary Clinton agreed that the incident was another declaration of war.
“We don’t know anything”, a relative told Ynet.
The event has sold out for the past two years, and only VIP tickets remain for this year’s party, officials say.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack but the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has directed or inspired a series of attacks in the country, the worst being November’s shooting and suicide bomb attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead. Police are trying to establish whether the driver, who is said to have had past encounters with police in relation to petty crimes, acted alone or with accomplices.
France’s President Francois Hollande returns to Paris for crisis talks.
As France comes to terms with yet another devastating attack, French PM Manuel Valls has announced a three day period of national mourning. In the speech, he reiterated support for the United States and France’s Muslim allies, saying that “Islam a religion that teaches peace and justice and compassion”. “It’s at that moment that the police were able to neutralize this terrorist”.
Moscow “fully shares the pain over the deaths of a large number of people, possibly including children”, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Wassim Bouhlel, a Nice native who spoke to the AP nearby, said that he saw a truck drive into the crowd.
Estrosi said surveillance footage showed the attacker boarded the truck “in the hills of Nice”.
“Right afterwards I personally saw 12 dead bodies, and it was already clear there would be more”.
He also said the driver had “completely premeditated behavior”.
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As the horrifying scenes unfolded, she wrote she will never forget “the frightened eyes of a woman”, or the “wild screams of children”. In a statement issued this morning Enda Kenny says “Once again innocent people have been targeted at an occasion of joy and celebration”.
