Rihanna has cancelled her concert at Allianz Stadium in Nice, France, on Friday (July 15) after a truck drove into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day and left at least 84 people dead.
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A truck loaded with weapons barreled through a crowd of Bastille Day revelers gathered Thursday to watch a fireworks display in the southern French resort city of Nice, fatally crushing people for more than a mile in what officials described as the latest in a string of deadly terrorist attacks to hit Europe.
He was stopped when the police shot him through the windshield.
“France was struck on the day of its national fete, July 14, the symbol of liberty”, a sombre Hollande said on national television early Friday, denouncing “this monstrosity” – a truck bearing down on citizens “with the intention of killing, smashing and massacring … an absolute violence”.
The State Department said two Americans are among the dead.
According to one city official, the rented truck careered on for up to 2 km (1.5 miles).
“A fraction of a second later, an enormous white truck came along at a insane speed, turning the wheel to mow down the maximum number of people”, he said.
“People were shouting “It’s a terrorist attack, it’s a terrorist attack”, it was clear that the driver was doing it deliberately”, she said. The attack, on France’s national holiday, followed attacks last November in Paris that killed 130.
“There was carnage on the road”. “It was shooting, shooting”.
It was a sad, familiar scene on the internet at week’s end as social media raged and howled in agony, sharing cartoons and hard images in an attempt to cope with what was shaping up to be yet another terrorist attack in France. It gave no source of the information. “All of France is under the threat of Islamic terrorists”.
Canadian Héloïse Landry, who is on vacation in Nice with her daughter, told The Globe: “We were out for the fireworks for Bastille Day, exactly where the attack happened”.
France has also sent troops to west Africa to keep Islamist insurgents at bay. The country is home to the European Union’s biggest Muslim population, and critics say it has alienated some in the community through strict adherence to a secular culture that allows no place for religion in schools and civic life.
Dawn broke on Friday with pavements smeared with dried blood. A German journalist saw events unfold from a hotel balcony, as the lorry doubled back from the direction of the airport, breaching the barriers erected on the promenade opposite the Lenval children’s hospital. Blue tarps covered bodies up and down the street. The truck’s windshield was riddled with bullets.
So far, no group has claimed responsibility.
Francis implored God for the gift of “peace and harmony”, and invoked divine blessings on the families of the victims and all the people of France.
“He looked nervous. There was a girl under the vehicle, he smashed her. The guy next to me pulled her out”, he said in broken English. Last week, a French parliamentary investigation into the 2015 attacks on Paris identified multiple failings by intelligence agencies.
The attack was the third major strike against France in less than 18 months.
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Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Holy See Press Office at the Vatican, said that Pope Francis is closely following and showing solidarity with the suffering of the French people.
