French authorities trying to piece together how a Tunisian man carried out the deadly Bastille Day truck attack in Nice detained two more people Sunday for questioning, sources familiar with the matter said.
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French judicial sources told the Reuters news agency on Sunday that a man and a woman with ties to the attack claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also know as ISIS) group were detained but provided no details on their identities.
Nice’s Promenade des Anglais is gradually reopening and becoming a shrine to the dead, with memorials set up on the westbound lane of the road in spots where victims were felled, some still identifiable by bloodstains.
Islamic State issued an indirect claim of responsibility for the attack two days later, on Saturday, saying Bouhlel was a “soldier”, though French officials have not established any direct connection between him and the terror group.
Scores are still continuing to receive medical treatment after the massacre which killed 84 people, French health minister Marisol Touraine said.
The government has sought to fend off criticism, assuring that security at the Bastille Day event was high and scrambling to reassure citizens about their safety.
France is holding a national moment of silence for 84 people killed by a truck rampage in Nice, and thousands of people are massed on the waterfront promenade where Bastille Day celebrations became a killing field.
Bouhlel, a resident of Nice, was born in Tunisia but had a permit to live and work in France. Bouhlel’s father said after the attack that his son had been prone to violent episodes.
Prosecutors said only 35 victims have been officially identified as they take painstaking measures to avoid errors of identification seen during the Paris attacks last November. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy accused the government of bad policies that he says failed to prevent three major attacks in the past 18 months.
Her lawyer Jean-Yves Garino said the mother of three has not been in contact with Bouhlel for a while.
Valls said Bouhlel had been radicalized quickly before carrying out the attack.
Manuel Valls, in an interview with the Journal du dimanche newspaper published Sunday, said the Islamic State group “is encouraging individuals unknown to our services to stage attacks”.
According to French media, a psychiatrist who saw him in 2004 said Bouhlel had come to him because of behavioural problems and that he diagnosed him as suffering from “the beginnings of psychosis”.
Joggers, bikers and sunbathers on Sunday cruised down the pedestrian walkway along the glistening Mediterranean Sea, where well-wishers placed flowers, French flags, stuffed animals and candles. 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.
The killer fired a 7.65mm automatic handgun at police before they shot him dead on Thursday night.
France has stepped up its security measures further in the wake of the atrocity, but many in the city said they had always been used to a visible military presence.
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“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.
