Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the attacker probably had links to radical Islam, but Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cautioned that it was too early to make the connection.
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The driver was identified as Mohamed Bouhlel, a Tunisian deliveryman known to authorities as a petty criminal.
The Nice attacker – a 31-year-old Tunisian named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel – wasn’t known to intelligence services.
An app launched last month by the French authorities to alert users to attacks failed to flash a warning until more than three hours after a truck rammed into crowds in the Riviera city of Nice, the interior ministry said, after several people took to social media to complain about the failure.
Police have arrested four more people linked to Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, as well as his estranged wife. He made similar statements after attacks in January 2015 at a kosher supermarket in Paris and the Charlie Hebdo newspaper that killed 17, and again after the November 13 attacks in Paris on a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes that killed 130.
Officials said 202 people had been wounded in the attack, with 25 of them on life support as of late Friday. But they don’t drive around killing people or setting off bombs in crowded public places.
Ms Jeffreys, 53, told the Press Association: “There were people in cars turning round on grass verges, reversing”.
Mr Smith said he was haunted by images of bodies lying in the street.
Another couple from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, said they saw a mood of celebration turn to one of fear as they watched the tragedy unfold from their holiday apartment balcony.
He said: “We are a bit wary of bomb attacks so we are used to the security”. It was the third mass-casualty attack against France in 18 months, leaving many shocked and horrified by the particulars but no longer surprised by the larger picture.
“The claim on Saturday morning by Islamic State and the fast radicalisation of the killer confirms the Islamist nature of this attack”. He said he had requested that the police presence be reinforced in Nice ahead of the display but was told there was no need.
“He was a little bit insane”, he said, but he added that he was shocked by what had happened.
According to French news channel iTele citing sources close to the investigation of the Nice terrorist attack, four detainees who were close to Bouhlel said that his behavior had changed dramatically prior to the attack – he became unusually aggressive and started referring to Daesh in conversations.
Emmanuel Grout, 48, a senior border police commissioner was among those killed, along with Robert Marchand, a 60-year-old industrial supervisor from Marcign in eastern France and 27-year-old Timothy Fournier from Paris who died trying to protect his pregnant wife.
Cox, 41, was shot and stabbed in the street in her Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Spen on June 16, exactly a week before the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, in which she campaigned for Britain to stay in the bloc.
He added: “What I do know, is that he never prayed, he never went to mosque, he had nothing to do with religion”.
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Tourists have returned to the promenade in Nice where scores of people were mown down in a lorry attack as it reopened amid the news France is to call up thousands of reserve forces to boost security.
