On Saturday, the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, claimed responsibility for the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, that killed 84 people and wounded 200, according to the Associated Press.
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Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, asked on Friday if he could confirm the attacker’s motives were linked to jihadism, said: “No…”
Rachel Maddow gives her take on the Bastille Day tragedy in France, the US presidential candidates’ responses to the attack and Donald Trump’s running mate Mike Pence.
France is observing three days of national mourning in homage to the victims – although that hasn’t stopped politicians from sniping at each other over who bore responsibility for the failing to stop the attack.
He said there were more than 185 police, gendarmes and soldiers from operation Sentinelle, launched after January 2015 attacks in Paris, as well as municipal police and a vast network of surveillance cameras.
Shortly after the attack, a Twitter feed and Facebook page called SOS Nice were created.
“I would like to take this opportunity to make a public statement to say that we share the grief of France in the rampage of multiple murders of their citizens”, Mr. Duterte said in a statement. The driver was identified as Mohamed Bouhlel, a Tunisian known to authorities as a petty criminal. Describing the attack as an act of terror, Hollande earlier said that operational reserves had been called up to assist police and security forces across the country.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has said it has no reason to believe an Irish person was caught up in the Nice terrorist attack. A French parliamentary inquiry last week criticized numerous failings by the intelligence services over the Paris attacks. The truck zigzagged for two kilometres through the crowd before police bullets killed the driver and brought an end to the carnage.
“It seems that he was radicalised very quickly – in any case these are the elements that have come up from the testimony of the people around him”, Cazeneuve told reporters.
The claim does not necessarily indicate that the attack was actually planned or commissioned by Islamic State; it may be simply a recognition of the attacker as an IS soldier after an individual initiative. He said he had requested that the police presence be reinforced in Nice ahead of the display but was told there was no need.
President Francois Hollande canceled a planned trip to Central European countries next week in order to oversee the security situation.
Fellow Tunisians in Nice said they hoped the attack wouldn’t reflect badly on them.
Many questioned how the attacker could have swept past police checkpoints at a prominent event that clearly demanded high security.
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Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s father said that his son suffered from depression but that he had barely any associations with religion and that “he didn’t pray, he didn’t fast, he drank alcohol, and even used drugs” in a statement to Agence France-Presse on Friday night.
