Last Updated on January 6, 2023 by CCAR Staff
NICE, France >> France called up thousands of reserve security forces Friday as authorities tried to determine why a Tunisian deliveryman known only to be a petty criminal took the wheel of a 19-ton truck and plunged through a terrified seaside crowd on Bastille Day, leaving 84 people dead and more than 200 wounded.
Witnesses described how Mohamed Bouhlel barreled his truck in a zigzag path down a crowded Nice promenade, aiming directly for children, for mothers pushing strollers and for families cowering behind plastic benches.
President Francois Hollande extended for three months a state of emergency that stretched back to the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and was claimed by the Islamic State group. It had been set to end July 26.
The government tapped its operational reserve of 25,000 — composed mainly of ex-military or former gendarmes — to relieve its tired officers and bolster border security.
Nice’s famed Promenade des Anglais, at the heart of city life — and the killing path of the truck — became a place of grieving with bouquets of flowers piling up as residents, some with candles, paid tribute to the dead.
Hollande said the attack was “undeniably terrorist in nature,” but prosecutors said the 31-year-old driver, a Tunisian who lived in Nice, wasn’t known to intelligence services.
No group claimed responsibility for Thursday night’s slaughter of tourists and locals packing the upscale seafront, where an estimated 30,000 had just watched a Bastille Day fireworks show.
They fanned out to enjoy nighttime street artists, arcade games and food stalls or strolls to their hotels beside the Mediterranean. Then Bouhlel used his truck to turn a celebration into a dash for survival.
Cyril Croisy said he saw the truck accelerate into the first crowds outside Nice’s landmark Negresco Hotel, aiming straight for a stand selling candy to children.
He said he tried to help the wounded, including a woman with catastrophic injuries.
“I was there when her heart stopped,” said Croisy, his eyes welling with tears. The 40-year-old Parisian suffered a broken arm while fleeing and jumping from the Promenade to the beach below.
Ten of the 84 dead were children. Of the 202 injured, 52 were critically hurt.
Among the dead were immigrants and tourists from many nations, including Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Switzerland and the United States. Two Scots were among the dozens listed as missing.
A man and his 11-year-old son from the Austin, Texas, area were among the dozens of people killed, relatives said Friday.
Sean Copeland, 51, and his son, Brodie, were vacationing with their family.
French prosecutor Francois Molins said Bouhlel had a loaded handgun, three replica weapons and an empty grenade in the truck, which he had rented three days earlier. Police considered him a petty criminal suspected since 2010 of various threats and acts of theft, vandalism and violent conduct, he said.
In March, he was convicted for a road-rage crime when he struck another motorist with a wooden pallet but received a suspended six-month sentence because it was his first proven offense.
Molins said Bouhlel was “totally unknown to intelligence services … and was never placed on a watch list for radicalization.”
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, his full name, from the Tunisian town of Msaken, in the center-east, was a resident of Nice, married to a Tunisian with dual nationality, Tunisia’s ambassador to France, Mohamed Ali Chihi, told the AP.
Bouhlel’s father, interviewed in Tunisia by France’s BFM TV, said his son was a depressed man who, in Tunisia, took prescription medication to calm fits of anger. He was not religious, neither praying nor fasting during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and was “always alone.”
Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel said his son had not been home in four years.
Hollande’s government, whose popularity is plumbing record lows in polls, has been buffeted by allegations that France’s intelligence services have failed to get a handle on the country’s jihadist threat. France has known for years that it is a top Islamic State target, and France also is the biggest source for European recruits for IS, with more than 1,000 fighting in Syria or Iraq.
Hollande, who flew to Nice visit the injured in Pasteur Hospital, declared three days of national mourning from Saturday.
He was booed by angry members of the public as his motorcade passed the scene of the slaughter.
“Why Nice?” Hollande asked in a television address. “Because it is a city that is known worldwide, one of the most beautiful cities on the planet. Why on the 14th of July? Because it is a celebration of freedom.”
It’s unclear how quickly the volunteers and part-time professionals will be on the job after their callup. Interior Ministry officials declined to comment on the timing of the deployment.
Bouhlel’s attack was stopped thanks to a handful of police who pursued the truck on foot and, possibly, by motorcycle as he plowed through the first crowds outside the imposing Negrescol.
