Officials have begun returning remains to the families, though 13 of the 84 who died have yet to be identified, the prosecutor said.
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Bouhlel apparently took four selfies on the promenade in the days leading up to the attack, according to Molins.
The paper quoted Nice police officer Yves Bergerat, who said local police forces’ guns and bullets aren’t even equipped “to puncture the tires” let alone shatter the windshield of a truck that size.
The suspects have already been transferred from the custody of the French anti-terrorism unit SDAT to the Paris court where they could be charged, the source said.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the driver, had a record of violence and weapons offences but was unknown to the intelligence agencies.
Three other UC Berkeley students were injured in the attack, all suffering broken bones, according to the school statement.
Jasmine, 49, she did not speak to Bouhlel but said she was not sure if he hung out with other female neighbours.
Meanwhile, France held a country-wide moment of silence on Monday to remember the victims, but mourning was punctured by anger and political division.
Driver Mohamed Lahouiaej Bouhlel sped his truck through the crowd, aiming to kill.
The number of French people who believe Francois Hollande’s government is up to the task of tackling terrorism plummeted to 33 percent after the attack in Nice, from confidence ratings of 50 percent or more in the wake of the two other major attacks in early and late 2015.
On the promenade, crowds booed as Prime Minister Manuel Valls arrived Monday with Marisol Touraine, the health minister – a reaction that reflected widespread dissatisfaction with the government’s perceived failure to prevent the attack, the third terrorist assault on French soil in 19 months. Friends and family said he had not been an observant Muslim in the past. Speaking from Tunisia, he told the Associated Press that the extremist in question, of whose existence he had learned from family members in France, had “found in Mohamed an easy prey for recruitment”.
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.
President Francois Hollande’s Socialist administration has come under blistering criticism from opposition conservatives after last week’s deadly attack in Nice.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has defended the government, saying it has bolstered security notably by sending thousands of troops into the streets.
After a special security meeting, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French forces in the US -led coalition struck IS targets again overnight and on Saturday. French warplanes have been involved in the operation in Iraq and to a lesser degree in Syria.
“We can’t lock people up on the basis of mere suspicion, or suspicion of suspicion”, minister for parliamentary relations Jean-Marie Le Guen said Tuesday. Yet within 48 hours of the attack, the Islamic State group claimed him as one of its foot soldiers, suggesting that volatile people such as Behloul may be prone to rapid radicalization, thereby posing a hard to calculate risk for authorities.
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Cazeneuve says: “These links for now have not been established by the investigation”.
