All were locked up pending further investigation.
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A week after Bouhlel rammed a truck into a crowd which had been enjoying a Bastille Day fireworks display, killing 84 people, Molins said photos on his phone showed he had likely already staked out the event in 2015, AFP reported.
Hollande said he decided at an emergency security meeting Friday to send artillery equipment to Iraq next month as part of increased military help to fight IS.
Bouhlel had photographed two of the suspects, Mohamed Walid G and Choukri C, in the cabin of the truck used for the attack.
However, many people interviewed by investigators described the father of three as “someone who did not practise the Muslim religion, ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had an unbridled sexual activity”, Mr Molins said earlier this week.
The prosecutor also said that Bouhlel’s interest in IS and other radical Islamist groups was rather recent.
However, although the Islamic State called the attacker one of its “soldiers”, there is as yet no evidence that he or the suspected accomplices had any direct contact with the terrorist network, the prosecutor, Francois Molins, who handles terrorism investigations in France, said at a news conference in Paris. Telephone records were used to link the five suspects to the killer, and allegedly to support roles in the carnage.
Neither Bouhlel nor any of those arrested were known to French intelligence services, Molins said.
Bouhlel reportedly also sent another text message at 10:27 few minutes before the attack to Ramzi A: “I wanted to say that the gun you brought for me was very good, so let’s bring 5 from your friend”.
Fresh information about last week’s deadly truck attack in the French city of Nice shows the attack had been planned for months and the attacker had accomplices. He said any police “shortcomings” will be carefully addressed but defended French authorities’ actions.
“There’s no room for polemics, there’s only room for transparency”, he said.
Mr Estrosi had previously questioned the government’s assertion that more heavily armed national police were on duty at the entry point.
Meanwhile, authorities in Nice have declined a request from French counter-extremism police to wipe surveillance footage of the truck attack, as the government and police faces criticism over the amount of security present at the promenade before the attack took place.
On the morning after the massacre, a young woman summed up the mood as she placed a candle at a dried bloodstain on the Promenade des Anglais.
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Since, the attack the National Assembly has extended the nation’s state of emergency for six more months, a measure that had been implemented following the November 13 Paris attacks that claimed the lives of 130 people-another attack claimed by the Islamic State.
