But the statement quoting an IS security member said Bouhlel was following IS calls to target citizens of the countries fighting the extremists.
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The truck’s driver, 31-year-old Tunisian Mohamed Bouhlel, had a record for petty crimes, but was not on a radicalization watch list.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said that while France “will win this war.we might be faced with new retaliations.there will probably be more innocent victims”.
It should also be noted ISIS has claimed responsibility for attacks it had no direct role in before, simply taking credit for the actions of people who were influenced by the group.
French President Francois Hollande flew to Nice, met the wounded and said the terrorist struck the crowd “merely to satisfy the cruelty of an individual – and maybe a group”.
Video: Bastille Day Attack: Why Has France Been Targeted?
“Ibrahim Bouhlel, a nephew, said his uncle had never had money problems, and had told relatives this week that he was planning a trip back to Tunisia for a family party”. The local children’s hospital said of the 30 minors brought for treatment after the attack, two had died, one was in critical condition, and three were on artificial respiration.
But a Nice friend of the mass murderer’s wife said the idea of Bouhlel striking a blow for radical Islam was at complete odds with his lifestyle.
The law enforcement boost announced by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve came on top of the 120,000 police and soldiers already on alert after the holiday terror attack that killed 84 and injured 202.
Speaking to journalists at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Cazeneuve said Saturday that the case demonstrated the “extreme difficulty of the fight against terrorism”.
An attacker drove a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, on Thursday night.
Mohamed Bouhlel drove a 19-ton lorry into a crowd which had been watching a fireworks display on the seafront during Bastille Day celebrations on Thursday evening.
French President Francois Hollande said Friday that the new reservists would be called upon to boost the ranks of police and gendarmes.
Bouhlel’s father insisted that his son was not religious, telling AFP: “He didn’t pray, he drank alcohol, and even took drugs”.
“We forgot. We forgot because the Euro went well”, Nathalie Goulet, a senator who headed a commission investigating jihadi recruitment networks, told the AP.
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.
The Islamic State had kept silent on the Nice attack until Saturday morning, when it declared, in a bulletin issued in Arabic and in English on its Amaq News Agency channel: “Executor of the deadly operation in Nice, France, was a soldier of the Islamic State”.
Still, the message was heard, prompting the security announcement later from Cazeneuve.
Msaken is just 10km outside the coastal city of Sousse, where on 23 June 2015, a gunman killed 38 people, mostly British holidaymakers, on a beach.
The driver’s ex-wife was being questioned on Friday.
Ahead of the claim by Islamic State, the militant Islamist group which grabbed control of swathes of Iraq and Syria but which is now under military pressure from forces opposed to it, French officials had not disclosed any direct evidence linking Bouhlel with the jihadism.
In Msaken, Tunisia, the attacker’s father, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel, told Agence France-Presse on Friday that his son had depression, but that he “had nearly no links to religion”, and that “he didn’t pray, he didn’t fast, he drank alcohol, and even used drugs”.
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“He would become angry, and he shouted”, he said, adding, “He would break anything he saw in front of him”.
