The Islamic State statement said Bouhlel was following their calls to target citizens of countries fighting the extremists, but it’s unclear whether he had concrete links to the group.
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He said police cars were unable to follow the truck onto the seaside walkway after it had “violently forced through the barriers” and onto the sidewalk.
A coordinated attack in Paris on November 13 killed at least 130 people in a strike claimed by Islamic State, and a series of attacks in January 2015 that began with an assault on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo killed 17 people.
Most of those taken in for questioning, including Bouhlel’s estranged wife, who has since been released, described him as violent and unstable.
Pictures have emerged of the Bastille Day killer, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, posing with a friend inside and outside his truck, the same one he used to kill his innocent victims reports The Mirror. Bouhlel, who was shot dead by police, was from Msaken, about 120 km (75 miles) south of Tunis, and had last visited the town four years ago.
About 85 people are still hospitalized in the wake of the attack, with 29 patients in intensive care, said Marisol Touraine, French minister of social affairs and health.
Authorities are trying to determine whether Bouhlel, a 31-year-old who had lived in Nice for years, was acting alone in Thursday’s attack.
“We have an individual who was not known to intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islam”.
A lone man driving a large truck through Bastille Day crowds killed 84 people in the French city.
Two more people, a man and a women said to have ties to the man behind the attack, were arrested on Sunday. The IS has at times asserted responsibility for attacks carried out in its name, even when there was no indication that the terrorist network had any direct role in planning or carrying out the violence.
Molins said that Bouhlel had in the days and two weeks prior to the July 14 attack sought to raise money through a bank loan, which was denied, a cash withdrawal and the sale of his auto.
“We can not exclude that an unbalanced and very violent individual” has been “through a rapid radicalisation, committed to this absolutely despicable crime”, he said.
The driver’s father has said that Bouhlel had received psychiatric treatment in the past.
Cruickshank said “no country in the Western world is threatened more by jihadis and terrorism than France”.
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President Francois Hollande’s Socialist administration has come under blistering criticism from opposition conservatives after last week’s deadly attack.
