The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq said in a statement released through its Telegram account on Saturday, “The person who carried out the operation in Nice, France, to run down people was one of the soldiers of the Islamic State”.
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The police said that, at the time of the attack, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was in possession of an automatic pistol, bullets, a fake automatic pistol and two replica assault rifles (a Kalashnikov and an M16), as well as an unarmed grenade.
An official with the Paris prosecutor’s office, which oversees national terrorism investigations, said a man and a woman were detained Sunday morning in Nice but provided no details on their identities.
“The 31-year-old Tunisian who killed 84 people by driving a truck through a Bastille Day crowd in Nice on Thursday spent years seeing psychologists before leaving Tunisia for France in 2005, his sister said”. “He would break anything he saw in front of him”, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej-Bouhlel said.
French TV stations, citing judicial sources, had earlier reported that Bouhlel also texted on Thursday night: “Bring more weapons”.
The Islamic State has previously claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks even when there wasn’t any clear indication that the group played a role. But the statement quoting an IS security member said Bouhlel was following IS calls to target citizens of the countries fighting the extremists.
Neighbors described Bouhlel as volatile, prone to drinking and womanizing, and in the process of getting a divorce.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, drove a 19-ton truck nearly a mile through revelers on Promenade des Anglais to watch the Bastille Day fireworks on the Mediterranean city’s waterfront Thursday.
Floral and papers tributes are laid with a French flag near the scene of a truck attack in Nice, southern France, Saturday, July 16, 2016.
At least 10 children were among the dead as well as tourists from the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Switzerland and Germany.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday the father of three “seemed to have been radicalized very quickly, from what his friends and family” have told police.
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More than 300 people were taken to hospital after the attacks, of those 85 remain in hospital and 18 people are in a life-threatening condition, according to the French health minister Marisol Touraine.
