The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France’s national holiday, the jihadist organisation said Saturday in its official radio bulletin. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it’s unclear whether Bouhlel had concrete links to the group.
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Islamic State’s news agency called the man who carried out the Nice attack one of its “soldiers”, but stopped short of claiming it had organized the attack.
The attack killed at least 84 people, officials said.
Bouhlel’s estranged wife, who had also been taken in for questioning, was released without charges Sunday.
People who went to the same gym as Lahouaiej-Bouhlel – where he did salsa dancing and lifted weights – described him as “conceited” and someone who “would flirt with anything that moved”.
Many continue to leave floral tributes at the metal barriers lining the promenade. He has also enacted Operation Sentinel, introduced after terror attacks in January 2015 that allow 10,000 extra military personnel to boost the ranks of security forces across the country.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told France 2 television that the attacker “is a terrorist probably linked to radical Islam one way or another”, but he did not offer specifics.
He “radicalized his views very rapidly”, Cazeneuve said Saturday, citing initial findings of the investigation after interviews with the attacker’s acquaintances but providing no additional details.
More than 80 people died when Tunisian man, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, ploughed his vehicle into a crowd celebrating the day on Thursday evening. IS said he was following their call to target citizens of countries fighting the extremists. His father, in Tunisia, said his son did not pray or fast for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. Touraine told reporters about 85 people remain hospitalized after the attack and 18 of them are in life-threatening condition – including one child.
Bouhlel was known to police for petty crimes but was not on a watch list of suspected militants.
On Saturday Nice’s seaside streets and beaches that would normally be bustling on a summer weekend were near-deserted, with teary residents making their way to the promenade to lay down flowers in memory of the dead. The man was “entirely unknown by the intelligence services, whether nationally or locally”, French prosecutor Francois Molins said.
“Even when Daesh is not the organiser, Daesh breathes life into the terrorist spirit that we are fighting”, he said, using an Arabic name for IS.
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Le Foll added that security on the night of the attack was just as stringent as it was during the Euro 2016 soccer tournament, which ended just four days before the attack in Nice.
