When the Sydney Morning Herald visited Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s flat, police were interviewing 49-year-old Jasmine in her ground-flat.
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Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also suggested that Bouhlel may have been influenced by ISIS to conduct the attack.
Thursday’s attack targeted France’s national holiday Bastille Day that is celebrated each year on July 14.
Now Laouaiej-Bouhlel has killed 84 people using the same method.
The Aamaq news agency cited a “security source” as saying the attacker “carried out the operation in response to calls to target the citizens of coalition countries fighting the Islamic State”.
Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, on Thursday night ploughed a 19-tonne truck into a crowd of people who had been watching Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city, killing 84 and injuring some 200 others.
The plight of the child emerged as parents and relatives used social media to share images of children who are still missing following the attack, in the hope that they can be traced.
The dead included six of seven members of one extended family – three generations – from northeastern France who had gathered in Nice to celebrate Bastille Day and each other’s company.
“Now is the time for mourning, but I sense that anger is growing”, Christian Estrosi, the conservative president of the greater Nice region, told France Info radio.
Five children and 21 adults remained in a critical condition and were among 121 people still hospitalised, the French health ministry said.
“The individual who committed this absolutely despicable, unspeakable crime was not known by the intelligence services, as he had not stood out over the past years-whether through court convictions or through his activity-for support of radical Islamist ideology”, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. He said he had requested that the police presence be reinforced in Nice ahead of the display but was told there was no need.
“We’re all in a state of shock at what’s happened”, said his father.
Corman, a Muslim who observes Ramadan, said that all throughout the Muslim month of fasting, a ritual that is one of the five pillars of Islam, Bouhlel smoked and drank, occasionally returning to the building smelling of alcohol.
The claim of responsibility came as French security chiefs met in Paris as Nice’s seaside boulevard partially reopened to traffic.
Still, the message was heard, prompting the security announcement later from Cazeneuve.
Speaking to reporters Saturday, Cazeneuve said police vehicles were blocking the entrance to the promenade but the truck “forced its way through by mounting the sidewalk”.
In an open letter published on the Nice Matin newspaper’s website, he denounced France’s current Socialist leadership as “incapable”.
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France is facing a general election next year, and the deeply unpopular Hollande is facing multiple challengers, from within his own Socialist Party, from the right-wing Republicans and from the far-right National Front. Her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, called the attack “horrible” and said he was postponing plans to announce his vice presidential running mate on Friday. “Which is basically a clever way to say: ‘We have been following the news reports and it seems clear he was IS inspired.’ All this very much fits in with Amaq’s function as an auxiliary outlet”. The identities of four of them were not known, but neighbours told The Associated Press that Bouhlel’s estranged wife had been taken away Friday by police.
