No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, which is being investigated by the Paris anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office. A three-day national mourning began from Saturday. A Reuters reporter saw about 40 elite police raid a small appartment at Rue Miollis, north of the central station, where one individual was arrested.
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The attacker, 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was slowed when a heroic member of the public leapt onto the vehicle and wrestled the driver.
There have been no claims of responsibility although Islamic State supporters have been celebrating the attack on social media, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Wounded people are evacuated from the scene where a truck crashed into the crowd during the Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, France, 14 July 2016.
Another neighbour, who did not want to be named, said she knew Bouhlel’s wife and described her as a “really lovely woman, who doesn’t deserve all this”. He was not previously known to French intelligence agencies.
“Although Thursday’s attack has not been claimed, this sort of thing fits in perfectly with calls for murder from such terrorist organisations”, Molins added.
Shortly after the attack on Thursday evening, French authorities said the incident was being investigated as terrorism.
He also said that the day before the atrocity, the regional council president Christian Estrosi wrote to French President Francois Hollande saying the police were grossly overworked, short-staffed and wouldn’t be able to protect Nice from a terror attack. The accused, who was shot dead by the cops, was identified as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
Several officers were seen grappling with a man at the rear of the truck which drove for more than a mile targeting innocent tourists walking along the popular Promenade des Anglais in the city.
A former neighbour in Bouhlel’s hometown of Msaken, about 120 km (75 miles) south of Tunis, said he had left for France in 2005, after getting married, and had worked as a driver there.
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Hollande, who has already extended a state of emergency by three months, is expected to assess all available options in response to the attack, which also injured more than 200 people, of whom 52 are critical.
