In the aftermath of the attack, Hollande announced he will extend France’s state of emergency – declared after last November’s attack in Paris and due to expire before the end of the month – for three more months.
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He was shot dead by police at the crime scene yesterday.
AFP reporter Robert Holloway witnessed the white truck driving at speed into the crowd, causing “absolute chaos”. Since Islamic State attacks past year, major public events in France have been guarded by troops and armed police, but it appeared to have taken some minutes to halt the progress of the deadly truck in Nice.
He said: “France has been hit by a tragedy once again”.
French President Francois Hollande said 50 of the injured people are “between life and death”.
“Why Nice? Because it is a city that is known worldwide, one of the most handsome cities on the planet”, Hollande said.
“According to eyewitnesses, Russian citizen Viktoria Savchenko (born 1995) and Russian expatriate Natalia Otto may be among those killed”, the ministry said. In January 2015, 12 people were killed inside the publication headquarters of Charlie Hebdo.
The Islamic State has claimed credit for that attack.
“We are in a war with terrorists who want to strike us at any price and in a very violent way”, the minister said.
“You go from having an absolutely marvelous time to sheer terror in a blink of an eye, literally”, he says.
As previously reported, French media have identified the suspect as 31-year-old French-Tunisian Nice resident Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
He had hired the truck on Monday.
A local government official said weapons and grenades were found inside the vehicle, which was made by Renault Trucks. After the Paris attacks, it became clear that several of the gunmen had links to neighboring Brussels.
French President Francois Hollande said “many foreigners” were among the dead.
Ten of the dead were children.
Tunisian security sources say Bouhlel, who had three children, came from the town of Msaken, six miles from the city of Sousse. “The motorcyclist attempted to overtake the truck and even tried to open the driver’s door, but he fell and ended up under the wheels of the truck”.
The condition of the motorcyclist was unknown.
“I nearly stepped on a corpse, it was disgusting. It looked like a battlefield”, he said.
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And it wasn’t just local Bastille Day celebrants who showed their solidarity with France Thursday evening. I can feel that there’s a great deal of anger and we’ll need to find a response to it. Not by responding to anger with anger, but with action. The president added that France would continue its air operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
