French authorities have yet to produce evidence that Bouhlel had turned to radical Islam.
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As tributes drew throngs of people back to the scene of the carnage, police investigated, with some four of the six people arrested after the attack transferred early on Monday for questioning at the headquarters of France’s counter-terrorism department in the western edge of Paris.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls observed a one minute silence before being jeered by large crowd angry at the government’s failure to preserve citizens’ safety.
“Daesh gives unstable individuals an ideological kit that allows them to make sense of their acts.this is probably what happened in Nice’s case”, Valls said, referring to the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins, who is in charge of the investigation, said the attack was premeditated.
Reports published in the name of two Islamic State media outlets said Bouhlel was one of the group’s “soldiers”, although they did not say whether he had coordinated his plan with the group.
Officials have begun returning remains to the families, though 13 of the 84 who died have yet to be identified, the prosecutor said.
Bunches of flowers and candles left on the Promenade des Anglais, many at the exact spots where people were killed, have swelled in number.
“Mohamed didn’t pray, didn’t go to the mosque and ate pork”, Sadok Bouhlel, 69, a retired teacher in the attacker’s hometown of Msaken, Tunisia, told the AP. Officials in Italy didn’t immediately respond to requests for confirmation. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s wife was also among those arrested.
The suspect is among seven people in custody in the probe into last week’s attack, which killed 84 people.
Police officers and rescue workers stand near a van that plowed into a crowd leaving a fireworks display in the French Riviera town of Nice on July 14, 2016.
At the home of one of the suspects, an Albanian national, investigators found the phones and cocaine, according to that official and the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Valls defended France’s record on attacks, saying security services had prevented 16 over three years, and said the modus operandi of cajoling unstable people into striking by whatever means possible was hard to combat.
Speaking ahead of the evening’s parliamentary debate on the emergency rule plan, Le Foll said President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government was willing to consider a longer, six-month extension of emergency rule in line with demands from right-wing members of the National Assembly.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Saturday, “I want to call on all French patriots who wish to do so to join this operational reserve”. French warplanes have been involved in the operation in Iraq and to a lesser degree in Syria.
“We know now that the killer was radicalized very quickly”, he said.
In an interview with the Journal du dimanche newspaper, Valls said the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack, is encouraging more people to stage attacks.
Cazeneuve says: “These links for now have not been established by the investigation”.
The Dubliner, who has lived in the city for eight years, said he was happy to stay in the face of the apparent targeting of France.
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A total of 59 people remain in hospital after Thursday’s attack, 29 of them in intensive care, out of 308 people injured overall.
