He praised the work of French emergency and security services during and after the rampage in which Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel, a troubled 31-year-old Tunisian, drove a truck down a seaside boulevard crowded with spectators at a fireworks show.
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Thursday night’s attack in the Riviera city of Nice plunged France into new grief and fear just eight months after gunmen killed 130 people in Paris. His father, in Tunisia, said his son did not pray or fast for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
Officials say that five unidentified people remain in custody for possible links to the attack, and two of them have had their detentions extended exceptionally beyond the 96-hour deadline.
Defending his government’s record, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told Le Monde newspaper in an interview that even with all the measures being taken, “there can never be zero risk”.
But French authorities believe that something may have changed.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls, jeered by crowds at a remembrance ceremony on Monday and criticized by political opponents over the attack, called for national unity as he presented the emergency rule bill overnight. Memorials for the dead have been set up on the westbound lane of the road where the victims were mowed down by Bouhlel. Pained and outraged epitaphs have been written in blue marker on stones placed where police shot him dead. An argument ensued, with other passers-by saying that his family deserved respect.
The veracity of the group’s claim couldn’t immediately be determined, but what is known so far about Bouhlel thus far suggests a troubled, angry man with little interest in the group’s ultra-puritanical brand of Islam. The testimonies suggest that there was something that suddenly pushed him to carry out the attack, he said.
Many in France are also angry at police and authorities for not preventing the deadly attack, even though France was under a state of emergency imposed after Islamic State attacks a year ago in Paris. “He called several times a day”.
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Charlton reported from Paris.
