Authorities investigating the truck driver who killed 84 people in a Bastille Day attack painted a complex picture Monday of a man who did not seem devout but had recently become interested in jihadi violence and researched past attacks in France and the United States, including one on a gay nightclub in Orlando.
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Five people believed to be linked to Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, including his estranged wife, are in police custody, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The police said that, at the time of the attack, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was in possession of an automatic pistol, bullets, a fake automatic pistol and two replica assault rifles (a Kalashnikov and an M16), as well as an unarmed grenade. “He executed the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition nations, which fight the Islamic State”. During a visit to Nice on Sunday, French Health Minister Marisol Touraine said the 18, including one child, were in a critical condition, while about 85 people in total were still in hospital.
Seven people have now been detained over the killings as authorities attempt to determine whether Bouhlel was acting alone.
She also called on Mr Cazeneuve to resign and said that France had the means to defend itself, but that its leaders were too weak to do it.
Islamic State has lost much territory in Iraq and Syria this year and some officials fear it may be calling on adherents to conduct high-visibility attacks.
“We are now confronted with individuals open to IS’s message to engage in extremely violent actions without necessarily having been trained or having the weapons to carry out a mass [casualty] attack”, he said.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the attacker probably had links to radical Islam, but Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cautioned it was too early to make the connection.
Hartley said to her knowledge there were no Americans among the missing anymore. “He had worked for eight years and this was the money he saved in France”, he said.
Speaking in Nice, the president of the Regional Council for the Muslim Faith, Boubakar Bekri, said mosques in the area had responded to the attack.
“I want to call on all French patriots who wish to do so to join this operational reserve”, he said.
A South African man who looked on in horror as he careened through the crowd on the Nice promenade, said he looked “calm”.
Some 30,000 people had gathered on the glitzy beachfront avenue, the Promenade des Anglais, to watch a firework show for France’s national day.
As investigators continue to look into the attacker’s motives, his uncle in Tunisia, Sadok Bouhlel, told The Associated Press his nephew had been indoctrinated about two weeks ago by an Algerian member of the Islamic State group in Nice.
Luther actor Idris stars as a former Central Intelligence Agency agent and Game Of Thrones actor Richard Madden plays a con artist in the James Watkins-directed movie, which sees the pair team up to stop a terrorist attack in the capital.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was divorced with three children.
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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”.
