It was after a day of military pomp and ceremony in Paris – where armed forces, tanks and fighter jets swooped down the Champs Elysees avenue – and spectacular firework displays that the crowd of party-goers in Nice was attacked.
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No terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Nice, but officials have said the country must face the consistent threat of terror.
So-called Islamic State said the attacker was acting in response to its calls to target civilians in countries that are part of the anti-IS coalition.
The investigation, meanwhile, focused on attacker Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian who had lived in Nice for several years, and whether he acted alone while driving a truck through the holiday crowd.
Bouhlel killed at least 84 people – 16 who are still unidentified – and injured more than 200 others in Thursday night’s atrocity.
A French parliamentary inquiry last week criticised numerous failings by the intelligence services over the Paris attacks.
The pair were arrested on Sunday morning, French judicial sources said.
French Health Minister Marisol Touraine said the 18, including one child, were in a critical condition, while about 85 people in total were still hospitalised. They were made in two different areas of Nice.
“(IS) is encouraging individuals unknown to our services to stage attacks … that is without a doubt the case in the Nice attack”, he said Sunday.
Following a ministerial meeting at the Elysee Palace, the French minister explained that it seems the attacker “was radicalized very quickly”.
France is also home to Europe’s biggest Muslim population, and has been criticized in some quarters for fostering racial, ethnic and religious disharmony through its strict adherence to a lay culture that allows no place for religion and ethnicity in schools and civic 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.
It is possible that ISIS did not have any previous knowledge of the attack, which could suggest that the attack was inspired by the actions of the group rather than orchestrated by them – a theory that experts who talked to Business Insider’s Pamela Engel raised in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting.
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 ofthe world’s top destinations.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that, after gunmen and suicide bombings, France was facing “a new kind of attack”.
But the measures appear to have done little to temper concerns.
Estrosi, a member of the opposition Republicans, said he had requested that the police presence be reinforced in Nice ahead of the fireworks display but was told there was no need.
But Cazeneuve said that high security had been assured in the region – including at the Cannes Film Festival and the Nice Carnival. “It’s false and the investigation will show it”.
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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”.
