BEIRUT, Lebanon-The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France’s national holiday, the jihadist organization said Saturday in its official radio bulletin.
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As a truck driver horrifyingly plowed through a crowd in Nice, France, on Thursday night, one fearless man reportedly jumped on the truck to stop it. It was then that police were able to get a good shot at the driver, according to news reports.
But, despite IS claiming responsibility for the attack, a neighbour of Bouhlel’s said he did not believe he was involved with the group.
31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck into a crowd during Bastille Day celebrations, just as a fireworks display was wrapping up.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, asked on Friday if he could confirm the attacker’s motives were linked to jihadism, said: “No….”
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.
The White House says it has offered significant security cooperation to France since Thursday’s events, which marked the third major terrorist attack in France in recent months.
A minute’s silence will be held at the French Embassy in Wellington on Monday to pay tribute to the victims of the Bastille Day attack in Nice.
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.
If anything, the father of three, who had only had recently acquired his trucking license, was said to lust after women, as the Guardian reports.
The delivery driver and father of three “was totally unknown by the intelligence services and he had never been subject to any sign of radicalisation”, Mr Molins said.
Of the 84 who died, 10 were children.
Latin American countries on Friday joined France in mourning the hundreds of victims of the latest terror attack on French soil, and condemned the targeting of innocent lives.
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa offered a symbolic “hug for France on its national day and in the face of this tragedy caused by madness”.
The arrests concerned the attacker’s “close entourage”, the sources said, and were made in two different areas of Nice. The prime ministers of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Israel, New Zealand, Turkey and the president of the European Council, are among the many who condemned the attack on social media.
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Jean-Louis Bruguiere, formerly the top Paris-based investigative magistrate handling terrorism-related cases, told Reuters no French or European intelligence or security agency had any trace on the suspect and no evidence has surfaced to connect him to any militant group or other suspects or even to casual contact with militant literature or propaganda.
