The Paris prosecutor says 13 bodies are still unidentified following the truck attack on Bastille Day that killed 84 people.
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Islamic State claimed the attack and hailed Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who drove a truck through a crowd of revellers on the French city’s sea-front promenade last Thursday, as one if its soldiers.
“We must not become accustomed, but learn to live with this menace”, Valls stressed.
Valls defended France’s record on attacks, saying security services had prevented 16 over three years, and said the modus operandi of cajoling unstable people into striking by whatever means possible was hard to combat.
Meanwhile, Italy is investigating whether Bouhlel recently had contacts with Tunisians living in the southeastern Puglia region, according to news agency ANSA.
“A search of his computer illustrates a clear… and recent interest in radical jihadism”, Molins said, adding that Bouhlel had recently grown a beard and told people it was for religious reasons.
“This bad attack shows that terror is directed against everyone without distinction”, said Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Among them was Bouhlel’s ex-wife, who was taken into custody Friday, the anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said.
For decades Nice, better known for the super-yachts that anchor in its cobalt blue waters and palm-fringed boulevards, has been a gateway for waves of immigrants arriving from France’s former colonies such as Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.
But on the city’s famed Promenade des Anglais, passers-by piled garbage on the bloodstained spot where Bouhlel was killed. They wouldn’t elaborate on the relationship between the suspect and attacker Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who was killed by police after ramming a truck through a crowd watching fireworks. It said the families had been notified and that the ministry expressed its solidarity “to the family and friends of the victims of the barbarous attack”.
Ms Le Pen called on Saturday for the dismissal of Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, after Thursday’s atrocity, and said that President Hollande’s government was guilty of “grave shortcomings” in failing to counter the…
Back home, Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said tourism in the Nice area had already seen bookings plunge by 20-30% after the attack, highlighting the risk the confrontation poses to a nascent recovery in one of the world’s top economies.
While previous attacks in France spawned grand displays of national unity, there was no semblance of cohesion after the Nice massacre, which comes ahead of presidential and legislative elections in April.
Referring to United States presidential candidate Donald Trump’s controversial plan to ban the entry of Muslims in his country, Valls said: “The response to the Islamic State can not be the “Trumpisation” of minds”.
About 85 people are still hospitalized in the wake of the attack, with 29 patients in intensive care, said Marisol Touraine, French minister of social affairs and health.
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Witnesses said the deliveryman had stopped in the middle of the street, blocking other drivers as he made the drop-off.
