The state of emergency now in place across France was implemented on the evening of November 13, last year, when “Islamic State”-affiliated militants launched several attacks across the capital Paris, leaving 130 people dead”.
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The man responsible for killing 84 people when he drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice last Thursday (July 14) had researched last month’s massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando prior to the attack.
Hollande held an emergency security meeting Saturday, and late in the day Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced he would call up 12,000 police reserves in addition to more than 120,000 police and soldiers already deployed around the country “because of the terrorist threat”.
The apartment on Route de Turin where Bouhlel was believed to be living before the attack was raided by police, and a view through the keyhole showed items including what appeared to be boxes of medication and a strip of tablets.
Hollande said a state of emergency – imposed after a string of terrorist attacks at a concert hall, national stadium and cafes in Paris on November 13 – would be extended by six months beyond its current expiration date of July 26.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, who oversees terrorism investigations, said by all accounts Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel drank, ate pork and had an “unbridled sex life”.
“Each time he had a crisis, we took him to the doctor, who gave him medication”, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel told BFM television, even showing journalists what he said was a document about his son’s psychiatric treatment. The attacker was a delivery worker and father of a family, prosecutor Molins said.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls was loudly booed Monday as he came to a memorial ceremony on the Nice shore, an expression of widespread criticism of the government’s security measures.
Her husband, John Lambert, said the couple was nearly struck by Bouhlel’s truck.
Joggers, cyclists and sun-seekers were back on Nice’s famed Riviera coast Tuesday as signs of normal life return to the city’s famous Promenade des Anglais, where dozens were killed in last week’s Bastille Day truck attack.
U.S. Ambassador Jane D. Hartley was in Nice on Monday, where she visited an injured American and met with American families who had lost loved ones.
After a special security meeting, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French forces in the US -led coalition struck IS targets again overnight and on Saturday. “He made more than 80 families grieve, and stained the reputation of our town and our country”.
At the Pasteur hospital, where many injured are being treated, emergency responders and other medical personnel gathered in the courtyard for the countrywide moment of silence, standing still in a row and clapping when it was over.
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“I saw his face”, Lambert told The Associated Press. The imam invoked France’s founding principles of liberty, equality and fraternity before members of the community filed past the three coffins and offered their condolences to the father.
