The official provided no details on their identities, and said five people detained previously remain in custody.
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French police found a Kalashnikov rifle and a bag of ammunition in the basement of a man held in connection with the Bastille Day truck massacre, a source close to the case said Thursday.
The prosecutor said the investigation made “notable advances” since the Bastille Day attack by Bouhlel, a Tunisian who had been living legally in Nice for years.
He said she “practised Islam in the proper way”.
While previous attacks in France spawned grand displays of national unity, there was no semblance of cohesion after the Nice massacre, which comes nine months ahead of presidential and legislative elections.
Bouhlel sent one of those people text messages just before the attack, the French security official said.
The name Mohamed Lahoualej Bouhlel is seen on a plate outside the building where Mohamed Lahoualej Bouhlel lived in Nice, France, July 17, 2016. Crowds stood on the rocky beach for several minutes looking toward the Promenade des Anglais, where Driver Mohamed Lahouiaej Bouhlel sped his truck through the crowd, aiming to kill.
On Saturday morning, the militant “Islamic State” (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack via one of its social media outlets.
Bouhlel was hardly a devout Muslim: He ate pork, drank alcohol, used drugs, and led “an unbridled sexual life”, said François Molins, the country’s top counterterrorism prosecutor, said at a news conference, citing witness statements.
The security official said Bouhlel sold his vehicle just before the attack, which appeared premeditated.
But French authorities believe that something may have changed. Some people questioned by police reportedly revealed that Bouhlel, who had no apparent interest in religion, had recently gone through a rapid radicalization.
In the midst of the flowers and candles on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais, a pile of stones and rubbish has piled up on the spot where the truck attacker’s rampage ended. Memorials for the dead have been set up on the westbound lane of the road where the victims were mowed down by Bouhlel. Some areas are still stained by blood.
The site is also becoming a platform for anger at the attacker.
Dr. Raj Persaud, a consultant psychiatrist and professor at London’s Gresham College, said Bouhlel’s path toward violent extremism might have been longer than people around him noticed.
Meanwhile, Nicolas Leslie, a University of California, Berkeley, student who had been missing after the attacks, is confirmed dead, the school said Sunday, relaying information it had received from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday all 84 victims had finally been identified.
“The investigation will establish the facts but we know now that the killer was radicalised very quickly”, he said in an interview with Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
The spokeswoman of Lenval children’s hospital in Nice, Stephanie Simpson, said the boy is Romanian and had been visiting Nice with his parents, who are missing.
A state of emergency imposed across France after the November attacks in Paris has been extended by three months, and military and police reservists are to be called up.
Valls defended the government’s actions but warned that more lives will be lost to this kind of violence.
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He also staked out the promenade in his truck twice before he struck, investigators said.
