French Police said they had made five arrests in early morning raids in Nice on Saturday in connection with the Bastille Day attack that killed at least 84 people when a truck rammed into crowds in the Riviera city.
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After ploughing down the promenade, Lahouaiej Bouhlel shot multiple times at three police officers, who followed the truck as it continued for another 300 metres, Molins said.
Al Jazeera’s David Chater, reporting from Nice, said there was still no evidential trail that linked the suspect to ISIL. In March, he was given a six-month suspended sentence by a Nice court for a road-rage incident. Authorities said he was married with three children.
In a tweet, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said “as we mourn tonight, we remember the values at the heart of the French tradition: liberty, equality, fraternity”.
From the lone wolf attack in Orlando to this latest incident, Europe and the U.S. have been engulfed by waves of violence carried out by Islamic State sympathisers at a time when there is a populist backlash against immigrants and the political establishment, be it bureaucrats in the European Union or lawmakers in Washington.
The so-called Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for Thursday night’s attack in Nice, as three days of national mourning begin in France.
Meanwhile, Hollande’s political rivals criticized the beleaguered French leader Friday over the deadly attack and accused authorities of not taking sufficient actions to prevent terrorism, the Wall Street Journal reported. “They are absolutely exhausted after a year and a half of intense efforts to try and protect this country”, Cruickshank said.
Airtalk spoke with Jones and Patrick Simon, a professor in Paris who he specializes in sociology and race relations in France to get a better understanding of the context for the the attack in Nice.
The father insisted the attacker had “had no links to religion” and the family “were also shocked” by what happened in Nice. We will not relent. 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.
VOA producer Linda Ringe was staying in a hotel overlooking the Promenade des Anglais, where the attack took place. “We saw people hit and bits of debris flying around”.
She went downstairs and crossed the street, where “there were many, many bodies and we knew they were dead because they were covered with sheets”.
Hollande declared a national mourning period from Saturday to Monday.
Addressing the plenary session of the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit in the Mongolian capital, Ansari said, “All our societies today face unprecedented levels of threat from terrorism in all its manifestations”.
The massacre has once again shaken the country to its core, and prompted questions about the effectiveness of security measures with the country already under an eight month-long state of emergency. He also extended Operation Sentinel, which was introduced after terror attacks in January 2015 and allows 10,000 extra military personnel to boost the ranks of security forces across the country. He said France would strengthen its roles in Syria and Iraq.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks before introducing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the Sharonville Convention Center in Cincinnati, July 6, 2016.
Speaking in Ulaanbaatar, Vice President Hamid Ansari called for the worldwide community to work together to erase the scourge of terrorism by taking speedy action against the perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of terrorism in the wake of the deadly truck attack that killed 84 people.
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The driver’s father has said that Bouhlel had received psychiatric treatment in the past.
