Cazeneuve told broadcaster TF1 that the attacker was not known to intelligence services and said he could not confirm his motives were linked to jihadism. It careered into families and friends listening to an orchestra or strolling above the Mediterranean beach toward the century-old Hotel Negresco.
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Some people tried to escape into the water, according to Eric Ciotti, a lawmaker who represents Nice.
Croisy saw an injured woman and said he crouched to help her. “Her son was on the ground, bleeding”, he told Reuters at the scene. Police broke into a first-floor apartment at 9.30 am on Friday. Smashed children’s strollers, an uneaten baguette and other debris strewn about the promenade. In the early hours of Friday, the truck itself sat finally immobilized in front of the luxury Palais de la Mediterranee hotel, badly damaged with its tyres burst and multiple bullet holes in its windscreen.
The Queen paid her own respects to the dead and injured on Friday night, sending a message to Mr Hollande saying: “I was deeply shocked and saddened to hear of the awful loss of life in Nice”. “It was shooting, shooting”. At least two Americans and one Russian were among those killed.
Local authorities in the Swiss town of Agno named the woman as 54-year-old customs agent Linda Casanova Siccardi, who was on holiday with her French husband.
“The truck pushed me to the side. The guy next to me pulled her out”, he said in broken English. A former neighbour in Bouhlel’s hometown of Msaken, about 120 km (75 miles) south of Tunis, said he had left for France in 2005, after getting married, and had worked as a driver there.
“This attack has all the elements to be called a terrorist attack, it was once again an attack of incredible violence” he said in an address to the nation. He would call up military and police reservists to relieve forces worn out by enforcing it.
Damien Allemand, a journalist for the Nice-Matin newspaper, said the fireworks display had finished and the crowd was dispersing when they heard noises and cries.
The man who wrestled with the shooter was not injured.
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. It had careered for up to 2 km.
– Just before midnight (2200 GMT), Nice’s regional head Christian Estrosi says on Twitter: “The driver of a van appears to have killed dozens”. It was not immediately clear if they were related.
A truck loaded with weapons and hand grenades drove onto a sidewalk for more than a mile, plowing through Bastille Day revelers who’d gathered to watch fireworks in the French resort city of Nice late Thursday.
“We’re very fortunate that police killed the driver by the time he got to that spot because one more block he would have been to where we were at”.
As more details emerge about the lorry attack in Nice, here is what we know so far.
“There was an altercation between him and another driver and he hurled a wooden pallet at the man”, Urvoas told reporters.
Police found one pistol and various fake weapons in his truck.
Social media carried images of people lying apparently lifeless in pools of blood. “Every person seemed to have died in an increasingly grotesque way”. The man was either divorced or getting divorced, according to people who lived nearby. They are also looking around the city for potential accomplices. His ex-wife was det-ained at 11am this morning, and remains in custody.
Records show that the 19-metric-ton (21-U.S. -ton) truck that was rammed through the seaside crowd in Nice was rented in the outskirts of the city on July 11 and was overdue on the night of the attack. But whether or not the driver had ties to extremists, the killing shows that such attacks can happen anywhere. It was unclear whether the sounds were him banging on its closed back doors to get it to stop, or gunfire.
“It’s at that moment that the police were able to neutralise this terrorist. Heard noises, screams that I will never forget”.
Just when Egyptian tourist Nader El Shafei looked like he would become the next to fall under its large wheels, the truck stopped.
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Clearly shaken by the incident, he said: “I saw this truck and he cut through three or four people, he was already missing the bumper”. But he did not give any attention to anyone outside the truck. He thought, “The truck has a bomb or something or maybe he is a suicide guy”.
