Despite a state of emergency following two recent terror attacks, authorities in France are facing criticism that they should have done more to protect one of the softest of soft targets: A pedestrian zone in Nice where 30,000 people – families and fun-seekers among them – turned out for Bastille Day celebrations that were turned to tragedy by a truck driver’s deadly rampage.
Advertisement
French authorities and media have yet to produce any evidence that the killer, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was radicalised – the interior ministry said it was checking the claim.
Bouhlel was known to police for petty crimes but was not on a watch list of suspected militants.
The 31-year-old Tunisian who killed 84 people by driving a truck through a Bastille Day crowd in Nice on Thursday spent years seeing psychologists before leaving Tunisia for France in 2005, his sister said.
However it is not clear if Islamic State are simply seeking publicity from the attack or whether they are claiming responsibility for an attack they may have directed.
Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said a special terrorism vigilance force created after the 2015 attacks will be extended through the summer, with more deployments outside Paris and more attention to tourist sites and crowded events.
“The man behind the running-over operation in Nice, France, is a soldier from the Islamic State, and he carried out the attack to answer the calls for targeting the nationals of countries in the coalition that is fighting Islamic State”, the terrorist group wrote in a statement via Amaq News Agency.
Information so far had suggested Bouhlel was a troubled, angry man with little interest in the ultra-puritanical brand of Islam. He did not go to the mosque, he did not pray, he did not observe Ramadan. The Paris prosecutor’s office said Saturday that five people are in custody following the attack.
“I want to call on all French patriots who wish to do so, to join this operational reserve”, Mr Cazeneuve said. But neighbors in the Nice neighborhood where the Bouhlel used to live told The Associated his estranged wife had been taken away by police on Friday.
People gather around a makeshift memorial to pay their respects.
“The world mustn’t stop”, he said.
“They said his wife was a good person”.
Hollande declared three days of mourning after the Nice assault as shellshocked France found itself again mourning its dead after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine in January last year and November last year’s massacre in Paris.
Romania’s foreign ministry says three Romanian citizens are missing after a truck driver deliberately plowed into a crowd in Nice during a fireworks display, killing 84 people and wounding over 200.
Advertisement
Via his spokesman, Hollande said that in the face of “these attempts to divide the country… we should remember the unity and cohesion of the country around our values”.
