ISIS claims role in deadly France attack
As anger rises, top cop says driver had been “radicalized”
NICE, France — The Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attack that killed 84 in this coastal French city, according to the organization’s news agency, as France’s top police officer announced for the first time that investigators think the attacker had been “radicalized.”
It remains unclear whether the Islamic State directed Thursday’s attack, was taking responsibility for an assault it inspired or was simply seeking publicity from an event that it had no direct hand in.
“It seems” that the attacker, Mohamed Bouhlel, 31, who drove a truck into a holiday crowd, “radicalized his views very rapidly. These are the first elements that our investigation has come up with through interviews with his acquaintances,” French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday, without offering further details. So far, five people have been detained for questioning in the case.
Seeking to quell fear and criticism, the French government called up thousands of police reserves Saturday to increase security around the country.
From the Nice seashore to Paris, critics lashed out Saturday at President Francois Hollande’s government, asking how a country still under a state of emergency after previous carnage from Islamic extremist attacks could have let this happen again.
As Promenade des Anglais, Nice’s boulevard along the Mediterranean Sea, reopened, tourists and residents paid tribute to those killed and to the 200 wounded, their blood still jarringly visible on the pavement. The solemnity was punctured only when a pair of plainclothes police officers tried to drive through the crowd, prompting angry shouts of “Shame!” The officers backed away after a brief standoff.
Hollande held an emergency security meeting Saturday, and late in the day Cazeneuve announced he would call up 12,000 police reserves in addition to more than 120,000 police and soldiers already deployed around the country “because of the terrorist threat.”
Cazeneuve tried to defend his police force’s record, but he had made similar statements after attacks in January 2015 at a kosher supermarket in Paris and the Charlie Hebdo newspaper that killed 17, and again after the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris on a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes that killed 130.
“It’s the third time in France,” said Rudy Salles, Nice’s deputy mayor and an opponent of Holland’s Socialist Party. “People are exhausted, are tired. And they are angry. They don’t want to go on like this.”
The investigation, meanwhile, focused on attacker Bouhlel, a Tunisian who had lived in Nice for several years, and whether he acted alone while driving a truck through the Bastille Day holiday crowd. He was shot dead by police Thursday night — and witnesses who saw him said he appeared determined to kill as many people as possible.
The Islamic-State-connected Amaq news agency, citing an “insider source,” said Bouhlel “was a soldier of the Islamic State.”
“He executed the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition nations that fight the Islamic State,” the news agency wrote.
Separately, the Islamic State al-Bayan radio station said Bouhlel used “a new tactic” to wreak havoc.
But the oblique claim of responsibility left open the question of whether Bouhlel had acted alone or had any prior communication with the group, which has also claimed ties to the attacks that struck Paris twice last year and Brussels in March. French authorities have been scrambling to determine whether Bouhlel had a support network in Nice.
Nice, meanwhile, was trying to return to normal Saturday by reopening the Promenade des Anglais to traffic.
All along the promenade makeshift shrines appeared, dotting the sun-splashed sidewalk. A woman placed tea lights and small icons of the Virgin Mary on the walkway. Flowers and tributes piled up at a makeshift memorial near the spot where the deadly truck came to a halt. People there Saturday grieved in their own ways. Some wept. Some simply stood stockstill and hushed.