Nice attack: Attacker shot dead, was petty criminal

Early indications on Friday suggested that the Nice attack was the work of a lone assailant. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, shot dead by officers at the scene, was known to the police for petty crimes but was not on the watchlist of suspected militants. He had one criminal conviction, for road rage, and had been sentenced to probation three months ago for throwing a wooden pallet at another driver. Bouhlel’s ex-wife was held for questioning on Friday, a police source said.

Tunisian security sources told Reuters that Bouhlel had last visited his hometown of Msaken, about 120 km south of Tunis, four years ago. He was married, had three children, and was not known by the Tunisian authorities to hold radical or Islamist views.

Nice-Matin newspaper said on Twitter that the police was searching the attacker’s home in the Nice neighbourhood of Abattoirs.

AFP reporters interviewed neighbours of Bouhlel, who portrayed him as a solitary figure who rarely spoke and did not even return greetings when their paths crossed in the four-storey block. Sebastien, a neighbour who spoke on condition that his full name was not used, said Bouhlel did not seem overtly religious, often dressed in shorts and sometimes wore work boots.

A source close to the investigation said an “inactive” grenade was found inside the vehicle, as well as “several fake rifles”.

After midday reporters were told by police to move away from a white Volvo delivery van near the home because they feared it might be holding explosives. Officers then carried out a controlled explosion, blowing the vehicle’s doors open and leaving shattered glass all around, but it was not clear whether they found anything incriminating.

Nice, a city of 350,000, has a history as a flamboyant aristocratic resort but is also a gritty metropolis. It has seen dozens of its Muslim residents travel to Syria to fight.

There had been no claim of responsibility on Friday morning, but on social media Islamic State supporters celebrated the high death toll and posted a series of images, one showing a beach purporting to be that of Nice with white stones arranged to read “IS is here to stay” in Arabic.

The truck attack is exactly in line with jihadist calls to action, a French anti-terror prosecutor said Friday. Francois Molins, who is leading the investigation into the massacre in Nice, said what had happened was “exactly in line with the constant calls to kill” which jihadi terror groups make in videos and elsewhere.

After the Paris attacks, the 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.

France is a major part of a US-led mission conducting airstrikes and special forces operations against ISIS, as well as training Iraqi government and Kurdish forces. “We will further strengthen our actions in Syria and Iraq,” French President Francois Hollande said, calling the tragedy — on the day France marks the 1789 revolutionary storming of the Bastille prison in Paris — an attack on liberty by fanatics who despised human rights. “We are facing a battle that will be long because facing us is an enemy that wants to continue to strike all people and all countries that have values like ours,” he said.

France has also sent troops to west Africa to keep Islamist insurgents at bay.

The country is home to the European Union’s biggest Muslim population, mostly descended from immigrants from North African former colonies. It maintains a secular culture that allows no place for religion in schools and civic life, which supporters say encourages a common French identity but critics say contributes to alienation in some communities.

The Paris attack in November was the bloodiest among a number in France and Belgium in the past two years. On Sunday, a weary nation had breathed a sigh of relief that the month-long Euro 2016 soccer tournament had ended without serious incident.

Four months ago, Belgian Islamists linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in Brussels. Recent weeks have also seen major attacks in Bangladesh, Turkey and Iraq.

Pop star Rihanna cancelled a concert scheduled to be held in Nice on Friday. Riders on the Tour de France, the top event on the international cycling calendar, observed a minute’s silence before Thursday’s stage, held three hours’ drive northwest of Nice.

Security has been tightened for the three-week race, which is watched by huge crowds lining the route around the country.

US President Barack Obama condemned what he said “appears to be a horrific terrorist attack”. Others joining him included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Pope Francis, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the European Union, Nato, the UN Security Council and Saudi Arabia’s top religious body.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said: “We understand what France and the French people are going through today.”