French National Front Party Leader Marine Le Pen today pointed to the mounting death toll from terror attacks in recent years in Paris and Nice as evidence of the need for ministerial change.
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French authorities have detained five individuals, including Bouhlel’s ex-wife, who will be questioned on Saturday, according to CNN. Amaq Agency, a news agency linked to IS, said: “He did the attack in response to calls to target the citizens of the coalition that is fighting the Islamic State”.
Most of those interviewed by The Associated Press said they felt it was right to reopen the promenade so soon after the attack.
Despite the assertion of responsibility, the nature and scope of the Sunni Muslim extremist group’s involvement in Thursday’s attack, which killed 84 people and wounded scores more, was unclear.
It also emerged that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel took pictures of himself at the wheel of the truck before the attack and shared them by text message.
Six people are said to be held for questioning over the attack, among them a 38-year-old Albanian who was arrested on Sunday morning on suspicion of supplying the pistol that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel used to shoot at police.
It’s the first claim of responsibility for an attack that claimed 84 lives at a July 14 fireworks display for France’s national holiday.
Born in the former French colony Tunisia, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had a temporary residence permit for France.
Now people have turned the spot where he died into a garbage pile.
Records show the 19-tonne truck that he rammed through the seaside crowd in Nice was rented in the outskirts of the city on July 11 and was overdue on Thursday, the night of the attack.
The prosecutor said Bouhlel had told people close to him that he had been growing his beard for religious reasons and that he could not understand why Islamic State could not have its own territory.
Some neighbors of Bouhlel, a father of three who was known to police as a petty criminal, have described him as a loner who tended toward violence and depression, while people who went to the same gym said he was “conceited” and “would flirt with anything that moved”.
In Paris, President Francois Hollande convened an emergency meeting of his top security advisers to discuss the investigation.
“Each time he had a crisis, we took him to the doctor, who gave him medication”, Mohamed Mondher Lagouaiej Bouhlel said.
Christian Estrosi, the center-right president of the regional council of Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, which includes Nice, wrote in an open letter Saturday that he had asked two weeks ago for additional security during the Bastille Day celebrations. Government spokesman Stephane Le Foll warned against attempts to divide the country, calling for “unity and cohesion”.
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Information for this article was contributed by Sudarsan Raghavan, Michael Birnbaum, James McAuley, Rick Noack, Annabell Van den Burghe and Souad Mekhennet of The Washington Post.
