Nice // France begins three days of mourning on Saturday after a gunman drove a 19-tonne lorry into crowds lining the seafront of the Riviera resort of Nice for a Bastille Day fireworks display, killing 84 people and leaving many of more than 200 injured in a critical condition.
The suspect, a 31-year-old French-Tunisian, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, and father of three children, had a history of violence and petty crime but no known links to terrorism. His identity card was found in the lorry after police shot him in a short gun battle at the end of his deadly journey on Thursday night.
Ten children were feared to be among the dead, with at least three more "between life and death". Among the discarded personal items still littering the pavement and roadway on Friday, a child's doll presented a poignant scene.
One Nice resident, a hairdresser, said she was shocked that many of the corpses of victims were not moved until dawn on Thursday, eight hours after the attack.
Message of sympathy and support were delivered to France by the leaders of numerous other countries.
The Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said prosecutor Lahouaiej- Bouhlel was known to the authorities because of "threats, violence and petty theft, offences committed between 2010 and 2016". His most recent altercation was a road rage incident in March for which he was given a sis-month suspended.
But the authorities were unaware of any sign of radicalisation, Mr Molins said, and he was "completely unknown" to the intelligence services. However police were questioning his estranged wife last night to see if he had given any signs of his intentions.
Mr Molins said that during the search of Buhlel's flat, police retrieved documents and electronic material which were now being investigated for any links to being investigated to terrorist organisations.
The attacker struck as holidaymakers and Nice residents were among an estimated 30,000 people gathered to celebrate France's national festival.
Victims of several nationalities were crushed by the white lorry, which was driven for two kilometres at speeds said to have reach 70-80km/ph, mounting the pavement along the lengthy Promenade des Anglais that sweeps from the airport to the old port.
The fireworks display had just ended. Witnesses said the driver repeatedly swerved to maximise casualties; "he was obviously intent on killing as many people as he could," said one food stallholder, who did not give his name. There were reports of a motorcyclist riding alongside the lorry and trying unsuccessfully to board in the hope of stopping its deadly progress.
Another witness, Nader El Shafei was quoted by the Bas saying he saw the driver face-to-face for about a minute. "He was very nervous ... looking for something around him," he said. "I kept yelling at him and waving my hands to stop. to tell him there were bodies under the lorry but he reached over, picked up his gun and started to shoot police."
Mr El Shafei feared the driver would detonate the lorry and joined others running towards the beach.
The lorry was said by one French report to have been allowed to penetrate the zone of the promenade pedestrianised for the festivities by pretending to be delivering ice cream, contradicting earlier suggestions that he burst through a barrier.
The vehicle finally came to halt close to the resort's famous luxury hotels, the Negresco and Palais de la Mediterranee. The nearby Casino was turned into a makeshift crisis centre.
Survivors fled in panic from the scenes, fanning into sides streets and taking cover in restaurants, hotels and other buildings. "It was a human wave — people just charged in and were hiding anywhere they could," said a waitress at Le Lodge, an Italian restaurant.
Although the driver was armed with a low-calibre pistol which he used to fire on police before being killed, a grenade and two heavier firearms found in the lorry were discovered to be fakes.
Although there was no immediate admission of responsibility, terrorism analysts discounted the theory that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel acted as a "lone wolf". "It was too well-planned," said Alexandre Mendel, author of a new book on extremism in France, La France Djiadiste. "I knew from intelligence sources that terrorists were suspected of planning something big in Nice, but the scale is beyond what was expected."
Two American citizens and holidaymakers from Russia, Ukraine, Germany and Switzerland were reported by French media to be among the dead, along with several people from the Nice area. Two of the 84 fatalities were children or adolescents who died during or after surgery at the Fondation Lenval children's hospital, where dozens of the wounded were taken.
France's president Francois Hollande chaired a crisis meeting in Paris before being flown to Nice to visit the scene. He said the attack was of "an undeniable terrorist nature" but pledged to continue his country's battle against terrorism and its attempts to target "countries that see liberty as their essential value".
He announced a three-month extension France's state of emergency, in force since 130 people were killed by ISIL terrorists in Paris on November 13 last year. He had hoped to lift the status before the end of the month.
Mr Hollande has remained committed to France's role in US-led air strikes against ISIL positions in Syria and Iraq despite threats from the terror group to retaliate, as it has now done several times, on French soil.
Nice has long been grappling with a problem of rising radicalisation among its Muslim community. About 250 people from the area are believed to be on deradicalisation programmes and more than 50 have travelled to the Middle East conflict zones since 2014.
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel worked as a delivery driver and lived alone in a first-floor flat in the Abattoirs area of the city, a short drive from the seafront. Armed policed began a raid at the shabby four-storey apartment block yesterday morning. Officials said he hired the lorry in the Nice area a few days before the attack.
The French channel, BFM TV, said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was the father of three children and became depressed after the breakdown of his marriage. One acquaintance told the channel he showed little obvious sign of interest in religion but liked to drink alcohol and dance salsa.
One mother, who gave her name as Jasmine, said he seemed "weird" and a loner and could be rude, refusing to open doors for other residents. The same woman said she was now determined to move, so ashamed was she to live in the same building as a man suspected of murdering so many fellow-residents of and visitors to, Nice.
If ISIL is shown to be behind the attack, the method — using a heavy goods vehicle as a weapon — is a departure from past tactics in which victims have been killed by gunfire, bombs or, in one isolated case last year, decapitation. ISIL's spokesman
The ISIL spokesman, Abu Muhammad Al Adnani, has called on sympathisers in the West to carry out attacks of their own design, echoing a message previously contained in online ISIL propaganda.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
http://ift.tt/29CpPAq
3Novices Europe
No comments:
Post a Comment