At Least 80 Dead As Truck Rams Bastille Day Crowd In Nice

Nice: On Thursday, at least 80 people were killed and another 100 injured in the southern French city of Nice after an attacker drove a lorry into a crowd celebrating which was the Bastille Day national holiday, authorities said.

The attacker behind the wheel on Thursday drove at high speed along the famed Promenade des Anglais seafront, hitting the mass of spectators who had been watching a fireworks display. Police later shot and killed the driver, officials said.

France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 80 people were killed, including children, and 18 were in critical condition.

Identity papers belonging to a 31-year-old French-Tunisian were found inside the truck, a police source told the AFP news agency on Friday. “The identification of the truck driver is still under way,” said the source. The identity papers indicate the man is a resident of Nice.

The attack struck just as the fireworks display — which was attended by thousands of people — was ending, at around 11:00 PM local time (21:00GMT).

Eric Ciottio, the ranking politician of the Alpes-Maritime department that includes Nice, said the lorry rammed into the crowd over a distance of two kilometres.

Ciotti said on BFM TV that police killed the driver “apparently after an exchange of gunfire”. He said the truck was loaded with weapons and grenades.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. 

French President Francois Hollande said the attack was clearly a “terrorist” act in a live television address on the early hours of Friday. “There’s no denying the terrorist nature of this attack of yet again the most extreme form of violence,” he said. Hollande said he would extend France’s state of emergency, which has been in place since the dead attacks in Paris last November, for another three months from July 26. “Nothing will make us yield in our will to fight terrorism. We will further strengthen our actions in Iraq and in Syria. We will continue striking those who attack us on our own soil,” he said, in reference to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group.

Residents of Nice, a Mediterranean city close to the Italian border, were advised to stay indoors.