REPORT: Truck attacker ploughs into French crowd, kills 84 celebrating Bastille Day

A gunman at the wheel of a heavy truck ploughed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice on Thursday, killing at least 84 people and injuring scores more in what President Francois Hollande called a terrorist act.

The attacker, identified by a police source as a 31-year-old Tunisian-born Frenchman, was last there four years ago also opened fire before police shot him dead. He had been known to the police for common crimes but not to the intelligence services, the source said.

 

Tunisian security sources reported that the attacker was from the Tunisian town of Msaken.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 18 of the injured were in a critical condition after the 25-tonne truck zigzagged along the seafront Promenade des Anglais as a fireworks display marking the French national day ended just after 10:30 p.m. (2030 GMT).

The attack, which came eight months and a day after Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers struck Paris on a festive Friday evening, seemed so far to be the work of a lone assailant.

Hollande said in a pre-dawn address that he was calling up military and police reservists to relieve forces worn out by a state of emergency begun after the militant group killed 130 people in the French capital in November.

Only hours earlier Hollande had announced the state of emergency would be lifted by the end of July, but the president said that following the attack, in which several children were killed, it would now be extended by a further three months.

"France is filled with sadness by this new tragedy," he said. "There's no denying the terrorist nature of this attack of yet again the most extreme form of violence."

Officials said hundreds were hurt as the driver wove along the seafront, knocking them down "like skittles". A local government official said weapons and grenades were found inside the unmarked articulated truck.

Dawn broke on Friday with the pavements smeared by dried blood, while smashed children's strollers, an uneaten baguette and other debris were strewn about the Mediterranean seaside promenade. Small areas were screened off at regular intervals. What appeared to be bodies covered in blankets were visible through the gaps.

The scene appeared to confirm what one city official said during the night - that the truck drove a full 2 km (1.5 miles)along the promenade after mounting the kerb.

The truck, a rental vehicle according to local officials, was still where it came to rest, its windscreen riddled with bullets.

Hollande called the tragedy on the day that France marks the 1789 revolutionary storming of the Bastille prison in Paris an attack on liberty by fanatics who despised human rights.

France would, nonetheless, continue its air operations against Islamic States in Syria and Iraq.

Police were trying to establish whether the driver might have had any accomplices in a city with a reputation for Islamist activism. There had been no claim of responsibility on Friday morning.

Major events in France have been guarded by troops and armed police since the Islamic State attacks last year, but it appeared to have taken many minutes to halt the progress of the truck as it tore along pavements and a pedestrian zone.

 

Police told residents of the city, 30 km (20 miles) from the Italian border, to stay indoors as they conducted further operations, although there was no sign of any other attack.

Hollande also called up former troops and gendarmes after racing back to Paris from the south of France in the wake of the attack.

The Paris attack on Nov. 13 was the bloodiest among a number in France and Belgium in the past two years. On Sunday, a weary nation had breathed a collective sigh of relief as the month-long Euro 2016 soccer tournament across France ended without a feared attack.

Four months ago, Belgian Islamists linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in Brussels.

Vehicle attacks have been used by isolated members of militant groups in recent years, notably in Israel, as well as in Europe, though never to such devastating effect.

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, a path taken by previous Islamic State attackers in Europe.

At Nice's Pasteur hospital, medical staff were treating large numbers of injuries. Waiting for friends who were being operated on, 20-year-old Fanny told Reuters she had been lucky.