Did Britons die in Riviera massacre?

Families’ desperate search for loved ones who are still missing

FEARS were growing last night that a ‘small number’ of Britons were among those killed or critically injured in the Bastille Day massacre in Nice.

It is understood they have been missing since the attack on Thursday and while their families have been in regular contact with authorities in the UK and France, they have heard nothing and now fear the worst.

In the immediate aftermath, it was not thought any Britons were among the 84 dead.

But sources confirmed last night that a small number of worried relatives had contacted the Foreign Office.

As heartbreaking stories continued to filter out of the Riviera city, it emerged that five people linked to Tunisianborn Mohamed LahouaiejBouhlel are now in custody.

Bouhlel, 31, struck on Thursday, ploughing his lorry into crowds watching fireworks on the Promenade des Anglais before police shot him. The attack also left 202 people injured, 52 of them critically.

As police carried out arrests across the city, Islamic State claimed responsibility, declaring that Bouhlel was one of its ‘soldiers’.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Bouhlel – who enjoyed salsa dancing and went to a local gym – seemed to have been ‘radicalised very quickly’. However, friends and relatives insisted he was not religious and said he drank alcohol and ate pork.

Cazeneuve added that the ‘new type of attack… showed the extreme difficulty of the fight against terrorism’.

The arrests followed analysis of the killer’s mobile phone records. ‘Bouhlel had been in contact with all five suspects on a number of occasions,’ said the judicial source. One is his wife who has links to terror suspects in Tunisia.

Another is Ramzie Arifa, a 22year-old from Nice, who ‘spent time talking with Bouhlel before the attack’.

Arifa’s sister, Arefa Bilet, said the door of the family’s flat was broken down by anti-terrorist police at 6am yesterday.

She said: ‘My brother is not a terrorist. We are Muslim but by my brother is not that religious – he drinks and smokes.

‘He was on the promenade on Thursday night with family and friends when the attack happened. He was as shocked as everyone else.’

Meanwhile, Christophe Lyon saw six members of his family wiped out in the massacre. He was the only survivor.

His wife Veronique Lyon, 55, and her son, Michael Pellegrini, 28, were both killed.

They were on holiday on the Riviera with her parents Francois Locatelli, 82, and Christiane Locatelli, 78, who also lost their lives.

They had met up with Christophe’s parents – Gisele Lyon, 63, and Germain Lyon, 68. They, too, died in the horror.

The first to die, though, was a Muslim mother-of-seven who wore a veil. Fatima Charrihi’s son Hamza said she was with her nieces and nephews at the time.

He said: ‘She wore the veil, practising an Islam of the middle ground. A real Islam. Not that of the terrorists.’

Eight months ago, 130 people were slaughtered in Paris, which along with the 2015 attacks at the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, were claimed by Islamic State.

The state of emergency in France imposed last November is being extended for three months. Last night the Foreign Office confirmed: ‘We are liaising with authorities to help British people affected by the incident in Nice.’

‘First victim was a Muslim in a veil’