Police raided his flat, where he reportedly lived alone, in the Abattoirs area of Nice yesterday. But the nature of lone-wolf attacks makes it exceptionally hard for the security services to prevent them all and the celebrations in Nice were just one of hundreds of similar events being held that evening.
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Islamic State has claimed the attack, calling Bouhlel one of its soldiers, but authorities have yet to produce evidence that the 31-year-old, shot dead by police, had any actual links to the militant group.
The solemnity was only punctured when a pair of plainclothes police officers tried to drive through the crowd, prompting angry shouts of “Shame!”
Manuel Valls, in an interview published in French media, said the Islamic State group “is encouraging individuals unknown to our services to stage attacks”. “The world mustn’t stop”, he said.
The truck was rented on Monday and was supposed to have been returned Wednesday, Molins said, without saying who rented it. Surveillance video shows that about two hours before the attack Thursday, Bouhlel rode a bicycle to pick up the truck east of the city, the prosecutor said.
Many of those who knew him said in the days after Thursday’s Bastille Day attack that Bouhlel was a hard person, describing him variously as aloof and hostile, even violent at times.
The ministry did not name the three in its statement Saturday, but said they were a family of a husband, wife and child.
The latest, a man and a woman who have not been identified, were arrested on Sunday morning, French judicial sources said.
The death toll from the Bastille Day attack reached 84 after a truck driver drove into crowds of revellers. “He wasn’t very nice”.
He said: “It’s at that moment that the police were able to neutralise this terrorist”. “He was cold and never spoke to anybody”, she said.
A woman living in the same block said: “I hardly knew him, but from what I could see he seemed very weird”.
Cazeneuve described the massacre as a “a new kind of attack”.
As Nice’s coastal promenade along the Mediterranean Sea reopened, tourists and residents paid tribute to the 84 people killed and the 200 wounded in Thursday night’s attack, their blood still jarringly visible on the pavement.
As France began three days of national mourning Saturday, Nice’s seaside Promenade des Anglais slowly and painfully came back to life.
Speaking to reporters Saturday, Cazeneuve said police vehicles were blocking the entrance to the promenade but the truck “forced its way through by mounting the sidewalk”. In an open letter published on the Nice Matin newspaper’s website, he denounced France’s current Socialist leadership as “incapable”.
Hollande was expected to meet Czech leaders on Wednesday.
But the statement quoting an IS security member said the man was following calls from the group to target citizens of countries fighting it. “The instructions of IS are to act wherever one is, by whichever means one can, so this (attack) matches exactly the recommendations of IS”.
Four more people linked to Lahouaiej-Bouhlel have been arrested.
Bouhlel’s father told French television that the family had sought medical treatment after his son had a breakdown. Messages seeking further detail were not returned.
The spokeswoman of Lenval children’s hospital in Nice, Stephanie Simpson, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the boy is Romanian and had been visiting Nice with his parents, who remain missing.
The identities of most of those brought into custody were not clear.
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“That last day he said he was in Nice with his European friends to celebrate the national holiday”, Bouhlel’s brother Jabeur told Reuters in their native Tunisia.
