The investigation “will try to determine whether he benefited from accomplices [and] will also try to find out whether Mohamed Laouaiej Bouhlel had ties to Islamist terrorist organizations”.
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The council observed a minute of silence in solidarity with the victims of recent terrorist attacks in France, Bangladesh and elsewhere before moving on to address the scheduled item on the meeting’s agenda.
Fellow Tunisians in Nice said they hoped the attack wouldn’t reflect badly on them.
At least 84 people have now been confirmed dead after an apparent terrorist attack in Nice, France, in which a truck driver plowed the vehicle through a crowd, and also opened fire on people, before being shot dead by police, the Washington Post reports.
The veracity of the group’s claim couldn’t immediately be determined, but French officials didn’t dispute it.
Defense and intelligence leaders are gathering at the Elysee Palace, the official residence of the French president, for talks about the atrocity, the third mass casualty attack against France in 18 months. He has repeatedly singled out France, which is part of the coalition, as a main enemy. French president François Hollande chaired a meeting of security and defence chiefs at the Élysée Palace at 9am, having made a decision to extend by a further three months a state of emergency that was put in place after multiple terrorist attacks in Paris last November. The Islamic State has blurred the line between operations planned and carried out by its core fighters and those carried out by sympathizers inspired, only at a distance, to commit violence.
French police have now detained five people in connection with the deadly attack.
“It shocks me because here’s a guy who comes from the same town as me”, said hair stylist Morgan Braham, 31. He had one criminal conviction for road rage, having been sentenced to probation three months ago for throwing a wooden pallet at another driver. Another neighbour said he was a “good-looking man” and she was suspicious of the way he eyed her daughters.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, asked on Friday if he could confirm the attacker’s motives were linked to jihadism, said: “No”.
Speaking to journalists at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Cazeneuve said Saturday that the case demonstrated the “extreme difficulty of the fight against terrorism”. “In any case, these are the first elements that have come to light through the testimony of his acquaintances”.
Investigators are still working to determine what weapons – besides the truck – the attacker might have used.
“He would become angry, and he shouted”, he said, adding, “He would break anything he saw in front of him”. “There was an altercation between him and another driver and he hurled a wooden pallet at the man”, Urvoas said.
In a France 2 TV interview Friday evening, Prime Minister Manuel Valls insisted there was no breakdown in security and lashed out at critics for playing politics. The son appears to have arrived in Nice around 2005 and to have returned to Tunisia for a sister’s wedding in 2012.
Bouhlel’s brother has ruled out religious ground for the attack, saying that the family still refuses to believe that their relative committed such an act. “His wife and her mother both complained about his violent behavior toward her”. His ex-wife was arrested and taken for questioning, a police source said. But signs of a shaken city were still in evidence.
Alain Boutahra, a 42-year-old Nice native, witnessed the truck barreling through the crowds on the Promenade des Anglais here on Thursday.
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The promenade reopened to vehicular traffic Saturday afternoon; it had been closed to traffic for the Bastille Day fireworks celebration and then, after the terrorist attack, it remained closed as it was turned, in effect, into a 1.5-mile crime scene.
