Drugs and organized crime are also said to be part of a landscape seen as an ideal recruiting ground for radicalization, chiefly by the so-called Islamic State or ISIS group.
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Chris Froome leads the race by 47 seconds from fellow Briton Adam Yates.
A total of 188 people were hospitalized due to injuries in the attacks, according to the Ministry of Health press release shown in the Tweet above.
French leaders on Friday extended the country’s 9-month-old state of emergency and vowed to deploy thousands of police reservists on the streets after Thursday night’s massacre of pedestrians leaving a fireworks display for France’s independence day.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he was deploying 70 police, medical and technical specialists in order to make sure that the remains of those killed were quickly returned to the families.
“France has been struck once again in her flesh, on the 14th of July, on the day of our national celebration”, he said, adding that the attacker wanted to “harm the very idea of national unity”.
After the Paris attacks, Islamic State said France and all nations following its path would remain at the top of its list of targets as long as they continued “their crusader campaign”, referring to action against the group in Iraq and Syria. The Consulate said it was working with authorities to determine whether any USA citizens were injured.
Politicians said the truck knocked over and crushed pedestrians over a distance of two kilometers (1 ¼ miles). “I’m still a little shaky”, he said. “But I saw something else”. “It is urgent now that it be declared”, she said on Twitter.
Helwani, who has traveled to Nice for the past six years, said he’s still shaken up by what happened, but won’t let it impact the rest of his trip.
The U.S. Consulate in Marseille advised U.S. citizens in Nice to call family and friends to notify them that they are safe. The Paris anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office was put in charge of the investigation.
If those reports prove accurate, they would be in line with the profile of the killers in previous major terrorist attacks in France and Belgium over the past two years.
That plot was behind a dramatic operations by French security service in February 2014 in pursuit of Ibrahim Boudina, a French national born in Algiers, who was suspected of being a member of a terrorist cell behind a grenade attack in Paris. Officials say that more than 80 people have died.
Eyewitnesses reported hearing gunshots and pictures on social media showed armed police with weapons trained on a badly damaged white lorry with what appeared to be bullet holes in the windscreen.
Montreal, the Canadian city that has deep ties to France, mourned the tragedy that unfolded during Bastille Day, France’s national holiday.
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President Obama also issued a statement calling the incident a “horrific terrorist attack”. France will hold three days of mourning for the victims beginning Saturday.
