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.
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Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Saturday said the father-of-three “seemed to have been radicalised very quickly, from what his friends and family” have told police.
Instead, he emphasized the role that drug abuse and anger problems might have played in making him carry out the massacre.
In the attack in the Riviera resort of Nice, Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a large truck into crowds of Bastille Day revellers, killing 84, before being shot dead by police.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the July 14 terrorist attack in Nice, France, which killed 84 people and injured more than 200, in a statement released on Saturday, July 16.
In contrast, flowers, French flags and candles make up a number of memorials to the victims on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.
Many are also angry at French police and authorities for not preventing the deadly attack, even though France was under a state of emergency imposed after Islamic State attacks past year in Paris. Now a few days later, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has officially claimed responsibility for the attack on the seaside promenade.
A man and a woman were arrested on Sunday and were being held alongside four people arrested earlier. On the third day of national mourning, the city is still struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.
Police are trying to piece together Bouhlel’s terror network as they questioned five suspected associates after raids across Nice.
While they all said he had always been indifferent to religion, some described a recent and very rapid conversion to radical Islam.
The operational reserve is now made up of 12,000 volunteers, 9,000 of whom are within the paramilitary police and 3,000 in the regular police force, said Cazeneuve.
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Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, who oversees terrorism investigations, said attacker Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had clearly plotted out the Bastille Day attack, with reconnaissance visits to the beach-front area where he mowed down revellers.
