The arrests come as ISIS claimed responsibility for the deadly attack and described Bouhlel as a “soldier of the Islamic State”.
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Amaq quoted an IS security source as saying one of its “soldiers” carried out the atrocity “in response to calls to target nations of coalition states that are fighting (IS)”. At least 10 children were killed in the attack, with more wounded.
People who are susceptible to IS extremist organisation messages can be convinced without prior training to commit extremely brutal crimes, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told French news agency AFP on Saturday.
French security officials are still assessing whether the driver of a truck that rammed into people on the Nice seafront was working alone or in a group, although the Paris prosecutor admitted that the attack bore the hallmark of Islamist militants.
French authorities told Reuters that they have yet to uncover evidence that Bouhlel had been radicalized and are investigating ISIS’ claim. “It’s satisfying to see life coming back”, lawmaker Eric Ciotti told France’s iTele broadcaster from the promenade.
Tahar Mejri is one of 30,000 people who had gone to watch the fireworks on the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais when their night turned to horror as the truck left mangled bodies strewn in its wake. “His mother would ask him – ‘why do you never speak?’ and he would reply ‘because I don’t want to talk.’ “He did not know people, he never sent us presents, he never said hello”.
His father Monthir Bouhlel said his son had undergone psychiatric treatment in the past.
The attack began just before 11pm, but the first so-called instant warning was not issued until nearly three hours later, arriving on users’ smartphones at 1.34am.
A man covered with a towel is apprehended by French police as the investigation continues two days after an attack by the driver of a heavy truck who ran into a crowd on Bastille Day killing scores and injuring as many on the Promenade des Anglais, in Nice, France, July 16, 2016.
Police shine a light as they approach the truck driver’s cab late on Thursday. “He would become angry and he shouted… he would break anything he saw in front of him”, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej-Bouhlel said in Tunisia. “We have an individual who was not known to intelligence services”. In March, he was given a six-month suspended sentence by a Nice court for a road-rage incident.
A neighbour of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who used to live in a high-rise block of flats on Boulevard Henri Sappia with his family, said he did not believe the 31-year-old was involved with IS. Social media accounts that usually support IS have been gloating over the attack, the third terrorist massacre in France since January previous year, but none mentioned the man’s name before authorities released it. The Paris prosecutor’s office said Saturday that five people are in custody following the attack.
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It is unclear what real role the terrorist group had in the attack. They were divorced. They said he was a very bad guy, that he beat her. And they in the neighborhood say it has nothing to do with Islam, he was not a religious person….
