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Five suspects in terrorist attack in Nice charged

The truck ploughed through the Bastille Day crowd, killing at least 84 people.

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A day earlier, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins confirmed the arrests of five suspected accomplices of the truck attacker.

The Nice attack was the third major terror attack in France 18 months and has led to widespread criticism of the government’s failure to tighten security.

At 10.27pm, minutes before the attack started, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel send his last text message, to Ramzi A. It read: “I wanted to tell you that the pistol that you got me yesterday it very good, so I want five from your girlfriend”.

Police have opened an internal investigation into last Thursday night’s events.

Mr Molins said information from Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s phone showed searches and photos that indicated he had been studying an attack since 2015.

Authorities initially said they believed that Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who had not been particularly religious, had become rapidly radicalised over a few weeks before the attack.

Hollande increased military support for Iraq in its fight against IS extremists as a result of the Nice attack, and French lawmakers extended a state of emergency in place since the deadly November 13 Islamic State attacks on Paris.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve acknowledged Thursday that only lightly armed local police were guarding the entrance to a pedestrian zone on the Nice beachfront when driver Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel sped past a barricade and ran over 84 people.

The prosecutor said he had placed the five people – an Albanian couple, a Tunisian man and two Franco-Tunisian men – under formal investigation after they were taken into custody.

While the so-called Islamic State claimed the attack, calling Bouhlel a “soldier”, investigators have not found direct proof of his allegiance to the jihadists. He said any police “shortcomings” will be carefully addressed but defended French authorities’ actions.

Liberation claimed that only two municipal police officers and one police vehicle were present on the entrance to the seaside walk where crowds were gathered for the fireworks show, saying that their findings were contrary to previous statements made by Cazeneuve.

Hours after the July 14 attack in Nice, the same man filmed the bloody scene on the promenade.

More than 400 investigators have been poring over evidence since the deadly attack in the southern French coastal city of Nice, which also left 300 injured.

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France’s parliament extended the country’s state of emergency for the fourth time on Thursday, expanding police powers to conduct searches and detain suspects for another six months.

French police and security forces examine the remains of the delivery truck that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove into a crowd of people on Bastille Day