Two French police officials say identity papers found alongside the attacker behind a killing spree in southeastern Nice belonged to a 31-year-old Frenchman of Tunisian descent with previous misdemeanor convictions but no known link to extremist groups.
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The attacker was said to have hired the lorry from a rental in Saint-Laurent-du-Var, a town to the west of Nice two days earlier.
At the Pasteur II hospital in Nice 18 people remain in critical condition after being injured in the truck attack on the Promenade des Anglais where revellers were celebrating Bastille Day. President Obama gave a statement and offered his support to France in their ongoing investigation.
Vehicle attacks have been used by isolated members of militant groups in recent years, notably in Israel, though never to such devastating effect. France’s ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, characterized the events in Nice as a “terrorist attack”.
“Soldiers at the end of the street were stopping people from going down”. “It was at that moment that the police were able to stop the terrorist. I won’t forget the look of this policewoman who intercepted the killer”.
A witness called Nader told BFM television he had seen the whole attack from start to finish, and had initially thought the driver had lost control.
“There was carnage on the road”, Wassim Bouhlel said.
Nice prosecutor Jean-Michel Prette said bodies were strewn about along the roadway.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who traveled to the scene, said police were trying to identify the driver. He said a handgun was found inside the truck, along with multiple fake guns and a fake grenade.
2200: A fireworks display attended by some 30,000 locals and tourists, including many children, begins near a tourist office on the Promenade des Anglais, a wide boulevard lined with palm trees and vast walking areas on the water’s edge that was closed to traffic for the occasion.
French President François Hollande said Friday that along with the 84 people killed in the Nice attack, 50 more are “between life and death”.
Hollande and Valls arrived in Nice on Friday after a meeting of the Security and Defense Council.
“France is deeply saddened, but it is also very strong”, Hollande said.
France has been under a state of emergency ever since and security across the country was high, with intelligence services warning of the risk of further attacks. The driver managed to ram his truck through about a mile-long stretch of promenade, firing shots into the masses, before he was shot and killed by police.
A photograph showed the front of the truck riddled with bullet holes and badly damaged, with burst tyres.
Local newspaper Nice Matin said he worked as a truck driver.
As well as the mass shooting at the venue, in which 89 people were brutally killed, three suicide bombers struck near the city’s Stade de France football stadium.
“I saw bodies flying like bowling pins along its route”. Minutes later, they heard a loud noise.
The bloodshed comes eight months after Islamic State jihadist attacks on Paris nightspots left 130 people dead, dealing a hard blow to tourism in one of the world’s top destinations. Just hours before, he had announced that the measure would be lifted.
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The attack was of an “undeniable terrorist nature”, a somber Hollande said in a televised national address, confirming that several children were among the dead. He pledged to step up efforts to fight terror in Iraq and Syria, and extended a state of emergency for three months.
