“We stand in solidarity and partnership with France, our oldest ally, as they respond to and recover from this attack”, said United States President Barack Obama.
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French authorities said police shot and killed the attacker, who drove the truck for about 2 kilometers through spectators along the famed Promenade des Anglais seafront. Staff in others talked of a “human wave” of panicking crowds dispersing down side streets and taking cover in their premises the night before. Police finally surround the stationary truck and fatally shoot its driver.
Chief Prosecutor Francois Molins said that 202 people were wounded in the attack.
The truck was still where it had come to rest, its windscreen riddled with bullets.
Bouhlel was born in Tunisia on January 3, 1985, Molins said.
Bouhlel had a criminal record, including a history of threats, violence, petty theft and earlier this year was sentenced to six months in prison for a road rage incident.
The use of vehicles as a weapon has been examined by the NYPD well before Thursday night’s attack in Nice, Miller said. Police arrested several members of the group, who were charged with plotting four terror attacks. German tourist Richard Gutjahr filmed the moment when an unidentified motorcyclist rode alongside the truck and grabbed hold of the driver’s door as two other police officers on foot nearby fired a single shot each at the driver’s windscreen.
Police investigate the scene after a truck plowed through Bastille Day revelers in the French resort city of Nice.
In times like these it’s often easier to see what we shouldn’t do than what we should, because there inevitably will be voices counseling us to embrace our fears and act on them.
Damien Allemand, a journalist for the Nice-Matin newspaper, said the fireworks display had finished and the crowd was dispersing when they heard noises and cries.
“I saw this enormous white truck go past at top speed”, said Suzy Wargniez, a local woman aged 65 who was watching from a cafe on the promenade.
Witnesses told how people were “flying like bowling pins” as the driver went on the rampage.
“France is filled with sadness by this new tragedy”, Hollande said in a dawn address that called it an act of terrorism.
Atrocities in Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels and elsewhere in Europe in recent years, as well as in Lebanon, Iraq, Mali, Kenya, Bangladesh among so many locations targeted by terrorists, have produced a new state of painful resignation.
French President François Hollande referred to the attack as of an “undeniable terrorist nature” and has called for an extension of the state of emergency. “We will keep fighting against terrorists to destroy the organization”.
France has suffered grievously, more than any other European country, in the past 19 months.
But Hollande faced public anger after traveling to Nice, 690 kilometers (430 miles) south of Paris, to offer his condolences.
Mr Estrosi said: ‘Attacks aren’t prepared alone.
“Mr. Estrosi is from the right”. Mr. Hollande from the left. She said while the attack is tragic and unsettling, it won’t stop her from going home. The group has repeatedly vowed to hit targets in Western Europe and it has expressed a particular antipathy for France because of that country’s ongoing military involvement against terrorists in North Africa and the Middle East.
“A number of attacks have been foiled, but for security agencies, it is like playing ping-pong with too many balls in the air”, he said.
Britain and Belgium said their threat level was already severe, indicating they regard an attack is “highly likely”.
Video footage showed men and women – one or two pushing prams – racing to get away from the scene. The man, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was killed by police. He told The Associated Press that his first instinct was to throw his 7-year-old son, Celion, out of harm’s way, while his wife pushed their daughter, 12-year-old Noemi, to safety.
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Hamza described her as “an extraordinary mum” and a devout Muslim who practised “real Islam, not that of the terrorists”.
