Locals caught up in Nice carnage
‘People ran to us screaming and crying’
SOME South Africans were caught up in the Thursday night Nice tragedy, witnessing the aftermath of the carnage caused by a lone driver who deliberately ploughed a truck into holiday crowds watching a fireworks display on the resort town’s famous promenade.
Henri Meistre, of Joburg, reassured friends and family on Facebook that his family had survived unscathed. They had bought sweets from a shop on the promenade a few minutes before the incident, in which a truck killed 84 people and injured many others.
The crowd were watching a fireworks display and included many children.
On Facebook, Meistre, who is in the motor industry, posted: “In Nice… All of us ok… we stood just to the left of where the truck came to a standstill. The little street store in the pics shown on the news stations is where we bought some sweets a few minutes earlier… attached some photos of all of us in the exact spot minutes earlier. Mayhem broke out and we all just ran away from the Promenade des Anglaise.”
The family had just sat down in a restaurant when the carnage erupted.
Also eating out was Cape Town’s Kata du Toit, a member of an airline’s cabin crew, who was in Nice on a stopover. She described hearing a shot fired and people rushing towards the restaurant crying and screaming. Only later did she realise there had been an attack.
The Department of International Relations and Co-operation said it didn’t know if any South Africans had died in the attack.
Yesterday, several neighbouring European countries intensified security on their borders with France.
European leaders and security chiefs said such lone attacks using ordinary vehicles were nearly impossible to prevent, and could be carried out by almost anyone.
“France will have to live with terrorism,” said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
His Belgian counterpart, Charles Michel, said in Brussels that “zero risk does not exist”.
The driver, identified by police sources as a 31-year-old Tunisian-born Frenchman, also appeared to open fire before officers shot him dead.
The man, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was not on the watch list of French intelligence services, but was known to the police in connection with common crimes such as theft and violence, the sources said.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 18 people were in a critical condition after the attack, while French President Francois Hollande said yesterday that 50 people injured remained in a critical condition.
The attack 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 enforcing a state of emergency begun in November after Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers struck Paris entertainment spots on a Friday evening, killing 130 people.
Only hours earlier he had announced the emergency would be lifted by the end of this month.
Following the attack, he said it would be extended by a further three months. – Reuters