“The most disruptive attacks are those that come out of the blue, like September 11”, Silke said, adding that France is unfortunately becoming more accustomed to extremist attacks on its soil.
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Officials said 202 people had been wounded in the attack, including many children.
His text message – to a man who has since been arrested – backs up the theory the attack was the work of an ISIS cell. Officials in Italy didn’t immediately respond to requests for confirmation.
One witness told authorities that Bouhlel seemed accustomed to looking at decapitation videos, Molins said.
The two are among the six people remain in custody in the probe into the attack, according to an official with the Paris prosecutor’s office, which oversees national terrorism investigations. Searches of Bouhlel’s computer and phone showed his online searches relating to IS, other jihadi groups and violent images, Molins said.
“The claim on Saturday morning by Islamic State and the fast radicalisation of the killer confirms the Islamist nature of this attack”.
Eighteen of the 85 people still in hospital are in a life-threatening condition, the country’s health minister said on Sunday.
Eighty-four people were killed in the attack.
The 31-year-old suspect in the Nice attack also had a record of violence and weapons offenses, and the truck he used in the attack was rented only several days ago.
Earlier, the ministry had said that three Estonians were among those injured in the attack.
Italian counter-terror police are now investigating a Tunisian living in Bari who spoke to Bouhlel hours before the attack.
Hartley said to her knowledge there were no Americans among the missing anymore. She declined to discuss the injuries saying that the family wants to protect Stratton’s privacy.
However, the prosecutor said, Bouhlel was not a practicing Muslim.
This has been pinpointed by as the day Bouhlel started staking out the Promenade des Anglais in the hired lorry.
With presidential and parliamentary elections less than a year away, French opposition politicians are increasing pressure and seizing on what they described as security failings that made it possible for the truck to career 2 km (1.5 miles) through large crowds before it was finally halted. Numerous dead and 308 injured were children.
Many are also angry at French police and authorities for not preventing the deadly attack, even though France was under a state of emergency imposed after Islamic State attacks previous year in Paris.
His apparent radicalization has puzzled investigators as well as friends and family.
“Mohamed didn’t pray, didn’t go to the mosque and ate pork”, Sadok Bouhlel, 69, a retired teacher in the attacker’s hometown of Msaken, Tunisia, told the AP. He said he learned about the Algerian from extended family members who live in Nice.
The report said there had also been failings in surveillance when convicted radicalized criminals were released from prison.
The French government is defending its efforts to fight Islamic State extremists overseas and at home, announcing new airstrikes against their strongholds in the past two days.
In Paris, President Francois Hollande and his Interior Minister Bernard Caze-neuve marked the silence, observed throughout France on the third and final day of mourning declared after the killings. Valls said later that the boos “do not touch me”, but he called them undignified and divisive. French warplanes have been involved in the operation in Iraq and to a lesser degree in Syria.
The Amaq news agency affiliated with the militant Islamist group said that Bouhlel “was one of the soldiers of Islamic State”.
Jaber Bouhlel said he recieved a selfie of his brother mingling and seemingly “happy” just moments before he killed 84 people.
Cazeneuve has rejected any suggestion of intelligence failings in the case of the Nice attacker, noting he had no known links to jihadist networks and appeared to have been radicalised very recently.
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Following the devastating attacks 10 months later on the national stadium and Paris nightspots they again stood together, for a moving rendition of the national anthem in parliament.
