A large truck mowed through revelers gathered for Bastille Day fireworks in Nice, killing at least 84 people and sending people fleeing into the sea as it bore down for more than a mile along the Riviera city’s famed waterfront promenade.
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The estranged wife of the Bouhlel is also still being held by authorities. “He would become angry and he shouted… he would break anything he saw in front of him”, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej-Bouhlel said in Tunisia. At least 10 children and teenagers were among the dead.
Of the scores of injured, 25 were on life support, authorities said.
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.
Thursday’s slaughter was the third major terrorist attack in France since past year. It was set to expire July 26.
MSNBC’s “pinned” tweet, a message that supersedes all others, mentioned the attack on Friday but did not reference terrorism.
Sympathy and condemnation for the attack dominated the opening of an Asia-Europe summit in Mongolia, drawing attention away from Beijing’s rejection of a tribunal ruling dismissing its South China Sea claims.
While Molins said that Lahouaiej Bouhlel was not known to have been radicalised, he said that the investigation would be devoted in part to determining ties with extremist organisations, saying the attack corresponded exactly to urgings broadcast by terrorist groups.
Initial indications are that Bouhlel acted alone.
Citing a French police official, theWashington Post reports Bouhlel was a Tunisian immigrant with a record of violent but not terrorist-related crime. Items were later seized from Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s Nice home.
The arrests, which came on top of two on Friday including the attacker’s wife, concerned the attacker’s “close entourage”, the sources said.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said attacker Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel probably had links to radical Islam, but Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cautioned it was too early to make the connection.
JANE FERGUSON: And, around the world, people paid respect to the victims by leaving flowers at French embassies. I was having problems just walking on the promenade. Tragically dozens of those on foot, young and old alike, were not so lucky. I’ve been living her for four months so I’m still settling [and] I often saw him during the day, but he was frightening.
The truck’s windshield was punctured by a volley of bullets, possibly fired by police, but some witnesses said the driver opened fire before he set out on his fatal ride along a 2-kilometer stretch of pavement.
Wright described the Promenade des Anglais as a hard place to escape with the truck barrelling down it. On the right of the walk is a steep drop onto a rocky beach while on the left, there are walls and small archways.
Residents of Nice and foreign tourists were among those who died.
Athens City Hall is illuminated in the colors of the French national flag in memory of the victims of the Nice attack and in solidarity with the French people in Athens, Greece on July 15, 2016.
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Mathir said by the time his son moved to France, he was fine. He said she “practised Islam in the proper way”. We have an enemy that will continue to attack all the people, all the countries who possess freedom as an essential value.
