CAIRO/NICE, France Islamic State claimed responsibility for the truck attack on the French city of Nice on Saturday as French police arrested three people there in connection with the carnage that claimed the lives of at least 84 people.
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“But at the same time, his operating method corresponds point-by-point to the instructions of the Islamic State group: to target a symbolic period (Bastille Day celebration), to cause the largest number of victims, to use any means available (a knife, a vehicle, a truck) to kill innocent people”.
In addition, a 22-year-old man was detained due to having received an SMS from Bouhlel just after he began to plow through the streets of Nice, and he will also appear in court.
Bouhlel’s estranged wife, who was arrested Friday, has meanwhile been released from custody, according to an official in the Paris prosecutor’s office.
“(IS) is encouraging individuals unknown to our services to stage attacks… that is without a doubt the case in the Nice attack”, he said Sunday.
He was killed by police after ramming his truck through crowds on Nice’s famed seafront after a holiday fireworks display Thursday night.
The Amaq news agency affiliated with the militant Islamist group said on Saturday in claiming the attack that Bouhlel “was one of the soldiers of Islamic State”. They could not be authenticated.
Searches of Bouhlel’s computer revealed violent images “linked to radical Islam” and indicated that he had a “clear, recent interest” in radicalism, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters at a news conference this week. Nevertheless, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Bouhlel may have undergone a rapid change.
In a pointer to a possible accomplice, one of these seven people still held by police had received a text from the killer thanking that person for providing a weapon, a source close to the investigation told Reuters.
He also confirmed the attack was “premeditated”.
Nice police department chief Adolphe Colrat, who answers to central government rather than the regional politicians who are leading the criticism, said the authorities had “at no time” lied or misled people on policing arrangements.
Five children and 21 adults remained in a critical condition and were among 121 people still hospitalised, the French health ministry said. Pained and outraged epitaphs have been written in blue marker on stones placed where police shot him dead.
The new laws passed also allow authorities to quickly shut down religious places of worship, as the Associated French Press states, “where calls for violence and hate are made”.
Ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is competing in a November primary for the ticket to run as presidential candidate for France’s mainstream center-right parties, said overnight Hollande’s government had failed to do all it could.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France must expect more deadly attacks despite precautions taken by his government.
The attack occurred when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian living in Nice, drove his truck through a crowd.
Speaking at the debate in the National Assembly, he said France would have to learn to live with the threat.
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He said France will continue its military operations overseas, which include airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, anti-terrorism operations in Africa and special forces in Libya. Approximately 2245: Soon after the firework show ends the attacker enters the Promenade des Anglais in the truck and drives down a stretch of about two km (1.5 miles) facing the “Vieille Ville” old quarter where numerous victims were killed.
