Four people have been in arrested in France in connection with a lorry attack that killed at least 84 people in the city of Nice, as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the carnage on the country’s main national holiday.
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About 25 minutes before the July 14 fireworks show, a popular event that draws hundreds of thousands of people to the seafront each year, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel climbed into the vehicle and drove toward the city center.
Defence and intelligence leaders gathered at the Elysee Palace, the official residence of the French president, for talks about the atrocity, the third mass casualty attack against France in 18 months.
The claim – circulated on social media by a news outlet affiliated with the group – didn’t name Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the 31-year-old Tunisian who authorities say was behind the wheel as a truck crashed into revelers Thursday night.
French investigators said they found an ammunition magazine, a fake pistol, replica Kalashnikov and M16 rifles and a dummy grenade in the truck’s cabin.
“Each time he had a crisis, we took him to the doctor, who gave him medication”, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel told BFM television, even showing journalists what he said was a document about his son’s psychiatric treatment.
The attack plunged France into new grief and fear just eight months after gunmen killed 130 people in Paris.
France, which has a Muslim population of almost five million, is also home to hundreds of jihadists who have flocked to fight alongside IS.
Nice prosecutor Francois Molins said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was a chauffeur and delivery man, known to police as a petty criminal but “totally unknown to intelligence services”.
Presidential contender and former prime minister Alain Juppe said Friday that the latest carnage could have been prevented if “all measures” had been taken.
But government spokesman Stephane Le Foll slammed Juppe’s comments, saying there was as much security present for the fireworks display as there had been for the Euro 2016 football tournament in the city.
“Despite all of that, this man’s decisions… created the drama and horror we experienced”.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has said it has no reason to believe an Irish person was caught up in the Nice terrorist attack. Al Amaq cited an unidentified security source.
For several years, extremist groups such as IS and Al-Qaeda have exhorted followers to strike “infidels” – singling out France on several occasions – using whatever means they have to hand.
“From 2002 to 2004, he had problems that caused a nervous breakdown”.
The Islamic State group claimed Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel as a “soldier” on Saturday, but what is known so far about Bouhlel suggests a troubled, angry man with little interest in Islam.
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At an apartment bloc in the Quartier des Abattoirs, on the outskirts of Nice, neighbours described the father of three as a volatile man, prone to drinking and womanising, and in the process of divorcing his wife.
