A truck full of arms, bombs and grenades killed 80 and injured many, many more when it mowed down a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France. TV news show “Tagesschau” tweeted one of his clips after reviewing it. It shows the truck driving down the road before it accelerated and crashed into the celebrating crowds.
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Police killed the driver of the truck, a 31-year-old Tunisian with French residency.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the government is declaring three days of national mourning after the attack.
“The 14th of July, a symbol of freedom, liberty, human rights are denied by these fanatics and France is obviously their target”, he said.
Only hours earlier Hollande had announced it would be lifted by the end of July, but he extended it by a further three months.
French officials quickly came to the conclusion of terrorism as the likely motive, as the scope of the slaughter grew clear.
Those in the immediate area of the attack are using social media to show solidarity – through hospitality.
A Rihanna concert scheduled for Friday night at the Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice has been cancelled, as have the city’s jazz festival, which was due to run from Saturday to Wednesday, and some of the Bastille celebrations over the weekend.
Nice airport was evacuated today after a suspicious package was found, but passengers were subsequently allowed back in and flights do not appear to have been greatly affected.
Besides continuing the state of emergency and the Sentinel operation with 10,000 soldiers on patrol, he said he was calling up “operational reserves”, those who have served in the past and will be brought in to help police, particularly at French borders.
“My husband and father-in-law actually heard the gunshot”. “I waited at the bar for more information because I thought it was a false alert”. The reporter added, “people are running, it’s panic”.
The attack amounted to a gut-punch to a nation that was struggling to restore some sense of normalcy and had begun to drop its guard.
Give For France, a campaign founded by the organization after November’s Paris attacks, has expanded its efforts to serve the survivors and victims’ families in the aftermath of the Nice tragedy.
By the start of this year, at least 55 residents of Nice and other towns in the department of Alpes-Maritimes, which covers the Côte d’Azur, had left to fight in Syria or Iraq.
In a press conference at the scene, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said: “We are in a war with terrorists who want to strike us at any price and in a very violent way”. Police, including at least one woman, then moved in and killed the man.
Turkey, where Islamic State and Kurdish militants have staged a number of attacks in recent months, offered its condolences.
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A state of emergency was instated eight months ago the day after Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris. It typically does so through its Amaq channel on the encrypted phone app Telegram, which serves as the group’s news wire. No one immediately claimed responsibility. They cheered, and laughed at the carnage. Linked to Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria and rival to Islamic State, Omsen specialised in French propaganda videos, many of which proved popular on YouTube.
