French authorities on Sunday arrested a man and a woman in connection with the Bastille Day lorry attack in Nice that killed 84 persons, CNN quoted a prosecutor as saying.
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The claim does not necessarily indicate that the attack was actually planned or commissioned by Islamic State; it may be simply a recognition of the attacker as an IS soldier after an individual initiative. But neighbours in the Nice neighbourhood where the Bouhlel used to live said his estranged wife had been taken away by police on Friday.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Bouhlel “radicalized very quickly”, which demonstrates the “extreme difficulty of the fight against terrorism”.
Tahar Mejri is one of 30,000 people who had gone to watch the fireworks on the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais when their night turned to horror as the truck left mangled bodies strewn in its wake. Hollande, who says the attack was a terrorist act, has already extended a state of emergency by three months.
He was identified by fingerprints after his identification card was found in the truck, authorities said.
A news agency linked to the group, Amaq Agency, said: “He did the attack in response to calls to target the citizens of the coalition that is fighting the Islamic State”.
Some neighbors of Bouhlel, a father of three who was known to police as a petty criminal, have described him as a loner who tended toward violence and depression, while people who went to the same gym said he was “conceited” and “would flirt with anything that moved”.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has criticised the French Government for failing its people, by not doing more to prevent the attacks in Nice and Paris.
The film, starring British actor Idris Elba, was released in the country last Wednesday, a day before Tunisian Mohamed Bouhlel drove his rented truck into a crowd on the promenade.
Officials said that 202 people had been wounded in the attack, with 25 of them on life support late Friday.
The claim must be treated with caution though as French investigators have still not established a link between the suspected attacker and any militants. This falls above the average time the group normally takes to claim similar attacks, both those carried out by operatives or sympathizers, according to Rukmini Callimachi, a reporter for The New York Times who focuses on the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
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“Pope Francis has prayed for the end of “terror and death” of innocents as he expressed closeness to families and all of France mourning the loss of lives, “even of many children”, in the truck attack”.
