At least 10 children and teenagers were among the dead, mown down as Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel ploughed his lorry through the festive crowd of thousands watching a fireworks display for France’s national day.
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Hollande said many foreigners were among the dead and injured in what he described as a “terrorist attack”. The so-called Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed responsibility for that attack. But Molins said Friday that the attacker was only armed with a single handgun, and that the other weapons found in the vehicle were “replicas”.
Italy’s Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, one of the many foreign leaders to express solidarity, said: “We are used to seeing postcards from Nice full of beauty, not images of death with a doll near a destroyed stroller”. The driver managed to ram his truck through about a mile-long stretch of promenade, firing shots into the masses, before he was shot and killed by police.
Explosives and grenades reportedly found in the back of the truck don’t appear to have been used in the attack, she says.
Partiers in summer apparel ran for their lives down Nice’s palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais, the city’s famous seaside boulevard.
But for Gilles Kepel, an academic expert on the Islamic and Arab world, France fails to understand the form of third generation terrorism whose method of carrying out attacks is becoming more and more simple.
CNN said it has spoken to a witness, identified as an American pilot, who saw the truck ramming the crowd.
In her first speech after the latest attack in France, May said the country must step up its efforts to combat terrorism, the BBC reported.
Cazeneuve said “we are in a war with terrorists who want to strike us at any price and in a very violent way”. Since authorities feared an attack during the Euro, police and security services held a simulated terror attack involving two suicide bombers on May 30 at the Stade de France. The state of emergency was introduced following the Paris attacks last November.
He said the country meant to tighten borders and would show “real force and military action in Syria and Iraq”.
Hollande confirmed the attack on Friday morning had been of a “terrorist” nature. Chistian Estrosi, president of the Nice Cote d’Azur region, took to Twitter to warn the people of Nice to “stay in their homes for the moment”. However, two USA officials said they had no information at this point about whether militants were involved in the Nice incident.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said the attack made her “sick at heart”.
After driving through people for two kilometers, the driver began shooting into the crowds until he himself was shot and killed by the police.
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Police were trying to establish whether the driver might have had any accomplices in a city with a reputation for terrorist activism.
