The truck driver who killed 84 people on a Nice beachfront had accomplices and appears to have been plotting his attack for months, the Paris prosecutor said Thursday, citing text messages, more than 1,000 phone calls and video of the attack scene on the phone of one of five people facing terror charges.
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Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, drove a 20-ton truck through hundreds gathered to watch the Bastille Day fireworks Thursday night on the Mediterranean city’s waterfront.
The truck attack, claimed by the Islamic State group, was the third major strike by jihadists on France in 18 months.
Cruickshank said “no country in the Western world is threatened more by jihadis and terrorism than France”. In an open letter published on the Nice Matin newspaper’s website, he denounced France’s current Socialist leadership as “incapable”.
IS claimed responsibility for the attack Thursday but Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday that investigators have found no sign yet that Bouhlel had links to a particular network.
France is heading into elections next year, and President Francois Hollande is facing multiple challengers, from within his own Socialist Party, from the Republicans and from the far-right National Front. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said there was no doubting the assailant’s motives.
He said: “We are in a time when, and we have seen it, there is a temptation to divide the country”.
He said the number of security forces deployed to protect the population was almost 100,000, including 53,000 police, 36,000 para-military police and 10,000 soldiers.
Feelings are raw. numerous dead and injured were children watching a fireworks display with their families, and a sign posted around town demonstrates a strong feeling of solidarity, calling for blood donations and stuffed animals for injured children.
French authorities have said the attacker became radicalised “very quickly”, and some of his family and friends had previously said he smoked, drank and never went to the mosque. “He said there were 64 national policemen on duty”.
“They say they saw bodies flying in the air when the truck hit them”.
Though the Islamic State terrorist group claimed credit for the attack, investigators said they had not yet found evidence that Bouhlel pledged allegiance to any radical groups or had contact with known extremists, BBC reported.
Both IS and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula have called on supporters – especially Muslims in France – to use any weapons at hand and attack anywhere.
The movie is a joint, American, French and British production and tells the story of a young French woman who is preparing an attack on the eve of the Bastille Day, and a Central Intelligence Agency agent played by Idriss Elba who is sent to Paris to stop her.
The National Assembly, meanwhile, extended France’s state of emergency for six more months.
An Albanian suspected of providing the driver with the pistol was arrested in Nice on Sunday. It also lets authorities ban any gathering deemed a security risk.
“When the interior minister says there were enough police, it constitutes a blatant lie”, he told i-Tele television. That brings the total in custody to seven as police continue to investigate the fatal, truck-ramming attack.
Hours later, he emerged wailing in distress from the Pasteur Hospital in the north of Nice after learning that his son was also dead.
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“This state of emergency has been used as a tool of communication, not a tool really to fight terrorism”, he said.
