Terrified revellers screamed and scattered as a truck careered into a crowd of fireworks spectators in Nice Thursday night, turning Bastille Day celebrations into a night of horror.
AFP correspondent Robert Holloway was among the thousands of adults and children who had gathered for the fireworks to mark France’s national day on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais when the nightmare began. He had to shield his face from flying debris as a gunman steered the truck two kilometres along the French Riviera resort’s palm-fringed beachfront, mowing people down. “It was absolute chaos,” Mr Holloway said.
Bodies lay covered in sheets on what is usually a bustling seven-kilometre strip curving along Nice’s clear blue coast, attracting tourists from the world over.
A child’s doll lay abandoned next to one of the dead. Ten children were among the dead.
Tarubi Wahid Mosta described how he had taken photos of the aftermath — children’s toys lying abandoned; an empty pushchair. “I almost stepped on a corpse, it was horrible. It looked like a battlefield,” he says, trembling, his eyes red.
“All these bodies and their families... They spent hours on the ground holding the cold hands of bodies dismembered by the truck. You can’t even speak to them or comfort them.”
When he finally went home, he brought a victim’s Yorkshire terrier dog with him.
A witness named Nader told BFM television he had seen the whole attack from start to finish, and had initially thought the driver had “lost control”.
“I was in the street. He stopped just in front of me after he (crushed) a lot of people. We were trying to speak to the driver to get him to stop. He looked nervous. There was a girl under the car, he smashed her. The guy next to me pulled her out,” he said in broken English.
Nader said he saw the driver pull out a gun and start shooting at police. “They killed him and his head was out the window.”
Marie, a 37-year-old security guard at the nearby beachfront Massena Museum — which itself hosted Bastille Day festivities just hours before the attack — described the panic as people tried to flee. “We saw hundreds of people rushing to get shelter,” she said, still stunned.
“I saw bodies flying like skittles as it drove along,” said local journalist Damien Allemand on the Nice-Matin newspaper’s website. “I just froze ... The beach attendants were the first on the scene. They brought water for the wounded and towels that they placed over those for whom there was no hope.”
The city streets were quiet as dawn approached, with the exception of the many soldiers and members of the security forces out on patrol.
Witness Roy Calley, who said he lived 200 metres from the promenade, told the BBC there was “all hell breaking loose” and the situation was “pretty horrendous”.
“It was a celebratory atmosphere, it was fun, people were enjoying themselves. Suddenly I heard a huge, what I can only describe as maybe an explosion or a crash. A lot of people were screaming. That was followed by what I thought were maybe gunshots.”
Earlier in the evening, as the crowds enjoyed the fireworks, lightning had flashed in the skies over Nice.
In striking the jewel of the French Riviera on a national holiday, the truck attack on Nice delivered a new blow to France’s tourism sector already reeling from repeated terror attacks.
On Friday, cultural events across France were cancelled or postponed as a mark of respect for the 84 people killed.
