A paper reading “Sieu Nissa, “I am Nice” in local dialect, the reed bends but does not break” is laid with a french flag and candles placed in tribute at the scene of a deadly attack on the famed Boulevard des Anglais in Nice, southern France, Sunday, July 17, 2016.
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In a sign of the mounting frustration over the string of attacks that have killed over 230 people since January 2015, Prime Minister Manuel Valls was heckled by mourners who booed and shouted “Murderers” and “Resign!”A sea of people thronged the seafront in Nice for a solemn minute’s silence on the last official day of mourning Monday”.
The Daesh-affiliated media group, Amaq Agency, said an IS “soldier” carried out the attack.
– How did the attack unfold?
The truck driver had recently been radicalized, according to the French premier. The police could hear people weeping and crying for help as others scrambled for safety.
“This is a big step back here”.
Anger over the failure of the French security services to prevent the Nice attack, the third major incident in 18 months on French soil, has been growing in the wake of Thursday’s mass killing.
– Who was the assailant?
His identity papers were found in the truck, along with a pistol and ammunition and a number of fake weapons including two replica assault rifles.
“Once the problem was racial discrimination, now it’s religious discrimination”, said Younis, who declined to give his surname, sitting at the entrance to a dreary eight-storey block of flats opposite the suburb’s small mosque.
Police knew about him because of threats, violence and thefts over the past six years.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said there was no evidence of Bouhlel’s allegiance to IS but a search of his computer “showed a clear, recent interest for the radical jihadist movement”.
His estranged wife was held for questioning and later released.
Investigators are hunting for possible accomplices of Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian who had lived in Nice for years.
The prosecutor’s office says the identification of the 49 remaining bodies is being carried out according to an accelerated procedure established after the November 13 attacks on Paris, using DNA or medical records provided by families.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says he could not confirm the attacker’s motives were linked to jihadism.
The probe is being handled by anti-terrorism investigators.
Many are also angry at French police and authorities for not preventing the deadly attack, even though France was under a state of emergency imposed after Islamic State attacks past year in Paris. After the carnage in Nice, 12,000 reservists were called up.
Cruickshank said “no country in the Western world is threatened more by jihadis and terrorism than France”.
– Who are the victims?
More than 200 people were injured. Garino said the woman, the mother of Bouhlel’s three children, had not been in contact with the attacker since they were in the middle of divorce proceedings.
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The dead included nationals of Tunisia, France, Germany, the United States, Switzerland, Algeria, Poland, Morocco, Russia, Armenia and Madagascar.
