Nice attacker underwent swift radicalization,
the French interior minister said Saturday. The announcement was the first
official confirmation of a terror link to an attack the Islamic State has
claimed responsibility for. More to come.
NICE, France — The
Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 84
in this coastal French city, the organization’s news agency said Saturday, as
French prosecutors took three more people into custody in connection with the
attack.
It
remained unclear whether the Islamic State had directed the attack, whether
they were taking responsibility for an attack that they may have inspired, or
whether they were simply seeking publicity from an attack entirely disconnected
from them. The Islamic-State-connected Amaq news agency cited an “insider
source” saying that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, “was a soldier of the
Islamic State.”
“He
executed the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition
nations that fight the Islamic State,” the news agency wrote.
Separately,
the Islamic State Bayan radio station said Bouhlel used “a new tactic” to wreak
havoc. “The crusader countries know that no matter how much enforce their
security measures and procedures it will not stop the mujahedeen from striking,”
the station said.
But
the oblique claim of responsibility left open the question of whether Bouhlel
had acted alone or had any prior communication with the group, which has also
claimed ties to the attacks that struck Paris twice last year and Brussels in
March. French authorities have been scrambling to determine whether Bouhlel had
a support network in Nice, where he appears to have been living for at least
six years.
Investigators
on Saturday detained three additional people in connection with the
attack, including one person who is believed to have spoken to Bouhlel by phone
minutes before he started his deadly journey down Nice’s Promenade des
Anglais, and an additional man was detained late Friday, according to the
office of Paris prosecutor François Molins. Authorities also detained
Bouhlel’s ex-wife Friday and were questioning her.
Nice,
meanwhile, was trying to return to normal Saturday by reopening the seaside
Promenade des Anglais to traffic 36 hours after Bouhlel turned it into a killing
field. Beaches were also set to reopen, even as flowers and tributes piled up
at a makeshift memorial near the spot where the deadly truck came to a halt.
French President François Hollande convened an emergency meeting of his top
security advisers to discuss the investigation.
The
scale of the carnage wrought by a Bouhlel came into grim focus Friday, with 10
children among the dead and 202 people injured. Among the wounded, 50 were
“between life and death,” according to French President François Hollande.
The
attack with a 19-ton rented Renault truck — the third mass casualty assault to
hit to France in 18 months — shocked the nation and sparked questions about
whether authorities had done enough to safeguard a country that is an obvious
target of terrorist groups. Many witnesses said Friday that the packed corniche
had been only lightly guarded by police during fireworks on the gently warm
night. Bouhlel, a truck driver, was easily able to drive around police fences
blocking Nice’s famous Promenade des Anglais before jamming on the accelerator
and zigzagging his way through the crowds in a method that seemed calculated to
generate maximum bloodshed.
The
identities of the victims testified to France’s diverse society and to the
international appeal of the tony French Riviera. A vacationing father and his
11-year-old son from Lakeway, Tex. A headscarf-wearing Muslim woman who came to
celebrate Bastille Day with her nieces and nephews. A French high school
teacher, his wife, daughter and grandson. Others from Russia, Switzerland,
Germany, Australia.
There
were so many victims early Friday that survivors grabbed tablecloths from
seaside cafes to cover the bodies strewn across the asphalt. The dead were
marked by rectangular orange and white traffic-control barriers that stood like
rows of tombstones.
‘A war waged on us’
Prime
Minister Manuel Valls on Friday drew a strong link to terrorism, despite the
fact that no militant group had claimed responsibility for the attack and
Bouhlel had no known ties to such organizations.
“The
threat of terrorism, as we have now been saying for a long time, is weighing
heavily on France, and it will continue to do so for a long time yet,” Valls
said after an emergency meeting in Paris. “We are facing a war waged on us by
terrorism.”
French
citizens are clearly reaching their limit. Valls and Hollande — whose
popularity is scraping record lows — were booed when they visited the seaside
scene of the attack Friday, in an apparent sign of anger over security lapses.
France
was shaken by a terrorist attack in January 2015, when militant Islamist
attackers took aim at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher grocery store in
Paris. Attackers struck again in November in a popular nightclub district of
the capital, setting off bombs and raking the area with gunfire.
This
time, the French population had just relaxed after living for weeks on
heightened alert during European soccer championships that concluded Sunday.
Hours before the violence in Nice, Hollande had announced that he planned to
allow a state of emergency to expire at the end of the month. On Friday,
Hollande said it would be extended for three months instead, and he said he
would boost France’s role in the Islamic State strongholds of Syria and Iraq.
The
attack was a “barbaric act,” Hollande said after meeting with top officials in
Nice. “An individual who took a truck and murdered people with it.”
Belgium,
Germany and Italy stepped up security along their borders on Friday, in a
measure of fears that the violence in France could spill into neighboring
countries. Belgium — which was struck by a bomb attack at the Brussels airport
and a subway station in March — is particularly nervous ahead of its own
national day Thursday.
As
investigators struggled to understand whether Bouhlel had acted alone, they
offered a first account of his path toward the murderous drive that concluded
in a hail of bullets from police officers who forced the truck to a stop
outside the grand Palais de la Mediterranee, a hotel.
Bouhlel
was a Tunisian citizen who had lived in Nice since at least 2010, when he first
ran afoul of authorities by engaging in petty theft, according to Molins, the
prosecutor. Most recently, he had been given a suspended six-month prison
sentence related to a January assault, Molins said. In that case, Bouhlel’s
former attorney told the local Nice-Matin newspaper, a motorist complained the
truck driver was blocking the road during a delivery. Bouhlel took a swing at
the motorist with a wooden beam, causing a deep wound, according to the
lawyer’s account. Bouhlel is divorced and has three children, neighbors said.
The prosecutor said the suspect’s ex-wife was taken in for questioning.
Truck’s deadly path
As
fireworks lit up the sky Thursday in celebration of Bastille Day, Bouhlel drove
the rented truck toward its fatal destination, Molins said. In the cab he
carried an automatic pistol, two fake assault rifles, a non-working hand
grenade and a phony pistol. He swerved around a police barrier blocking the
Promenade des Anglais just next to a children’s hospital, then sped through the
crowds, leaving carnage in his path. More than a mile later, three police
officers traded fire with him, Molins said. Authorities think the truck kept
going 300 yards after he had been shot. Police found him dead in the passenger
seat.
Bouhlel
was “entirely unknown” to anti-terrorist units, the prosecutor said.
“Yesterday’s attack has not yet been claimed, but I must stay that this kind of
attack is in line with the type advocated by the terrorist organizations in
various videos,” he said.
Witnesses described confusion and chaos
Thursday night as hundreds of panicked bystanders ran to try to escape the
deadly truck.
After
the fireworks, Adrien Dobrescu, 54, who was visiting from Romania, heard more
sharp bangs. “Someone was screaming, and I saw gunfire,” he said. He ran with a
crowd as fast as he could off the promenade. “I had waited two, four minutes, I
would be dead, too.”
Survivors
were left to deal with the wounded and dead.
“There
were so many injured, and dead bodies,” said Fiona Le Goff, 27, a concierge at
an apartment building facing the Promenade des Anglais. “The worst was a woman
whose body was just stuck to the street.”
Later,
she surveyed the area as forensic teams moved in. “There were people just
covered with white cloths,” she said. “It was horrible.”
After
the bodies of victims had been hauled away Friday, the macabre truck remained
for hours. More than 25 bullet holes riddled its front, and its doors stood
open while investigators searched it. Barely 100 yards away, mourners piled
flowers and remembrances at the base of a palm tree, some of them crying while
they sang “La Marseillaise,” France’s anthem.
Representative Image
Source: The Washington Post
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