The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A ‘soldier’ of the Islamic State
Death toll remains at 84, but number of injured tops 300.
The man who attacked the French city of Nice on Bastille Day, killing more than 80 people and injuring more than 300, was one of the Islamic State’s “soldiers,” the terrorist network claims.
NICE, FRANCE — The Islamic State claimed Saturday that the man who attacked the seaside city of Nice was one of the group’s “soldiers.”
France’s defense minister promptly blamed the terrorist network for inspiring the assault, while the country’s top law enforcement official said the attacker, who was not previously known to intelligence agencies, may have “radicalized himself very quickly.”
The attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, carried out the assault Thursday evening using a 19-ton refrigerated truck and an automatic pistol. The death toll Saturday remained at 84, but the number of injured rose to 303, of whom 26 were in intensive care.
France, traumatized by three major terrorist assaults in 19 months, began three days of national mourning.
The Islamic State had kept silent on the Nice attack until Saturday morning, when it declared, in a bulletin issued in Arabic and in English on its Amaq News Agency channel: “Executor of the deadly operation in Nice, France, was a soldier of the Islamic State. He executed the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition nations, which fight the Islamic State.”
The claim must be greeted with caution, because there was yet no evidence suggesting that the driver was radicalized, or had even been exposed to the Islamic State’s propaganda.
After a husband and wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December, the Amaq News Agency described them as “two supporters,” making it clear that the Islamic State had not directed their actions. But after a gunman, Omar Mateen, killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., last month, having pledged loyalty to the group, it called him a “fighter.”
No evidence has emerged that Lahouaiej Bouhlel got training or orders from the Islamic State, unlike the perpetrators of attacks in and around Paris on Nov. 13 and Brussels on March 22. The Islamic State has blurred the line between operations planned and carried out by its core fighters and those carried out by sympathizers inspired by its propaganda to commit violence.
“Even if Daesh doesn’t do the organizing, Daesh inspires this terrorist spirit, against which we are fighting,” French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Saturday, using the Arabic name for the Islamic State.
Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a native of Tunisia, had a history of petty crime going back to 2010. He received a six-month suspended sentence this year for assaulting a motorist, but was not on the radar of French intelligence agencies. Indeed, he seemed more like a surly misfit — he beat his wife, until she threw him out — than a prospective terrorist.
“It seems that he radicalized himself very quickly,” the country’s top law enforcement official, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, said Saturday.
In Msaken, Tunisia, the attacker’s father, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel, told Agence France-Presse on Friday night that his son had depression, but that he “had almost no links to religion.”
“He didn’t pray,” he said. “He didn’t fast, he drank alcohol, and even used drugs.”
He added that from 2002 to 2004, his son “had problems that caused a nervous breakdown.”
“He would become angry, and he shouted,” he said. “He would break anything he saw in front of him.”
The son was prescribed medication for emotional problems, the elder Lahouaiej Bouhlel said, adding that his son was “always alone, always depressed” and often silent.
He said the family had almost no contact with his son since left for France, apparently around 2005.
The Huffington Post quoted Rabab Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a sister of the attacker, as saying her brother “did not drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, but he also did not pray and never entered a mosque in his life.” She added: “He was just not stable psychologically and mentally. His wife and her mother both complained about his violent behavior toward her.”
Four people acquainted with Lahouaiej Bouhlel are in police custody, along with his estranged wife.
Since Thursday evening, several French officials — particularly from right-leaning parties opposed to President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government — have criticized the government’s handling of intelligence gathering and law enforcement, especially after attacks in January and in November that killed a total of 147 people.
Christian Estrosi, president of the region encompassing Nice, wrote in an open letter Saturday that he had asked for additional security for Bastille Day, but was rebuffed because there was no specific threat.
“Why, while I have for the past two years never ceased to ask the government for new means of fighting terrorism, means to arm our national and municipal police, regulatory means, legislative means, have I never received an answer?” Estrosi said.
But Stéphane Le Foll, the chief government spokesman, batted away criticism.
“Those who, after a tragedy like this one, come and say that they would have had the solution, that with them, nothing would have happened, I leave them to their total lack of responsibility,” Le Foll told Europe 1 radio Saturday morning. “When you are talking after the fact, you can always find solutions.”
Le Foll said security in Nice on the night of the attack was as tight as it was during the Euro 2016 soccer tournament, which ended July 10. The tournament was targeted by several plots that authorities thwarted, according to Cazeneuve.
People returned to the beach Saturday, in far smaller numbers than in the days before the attack, but signs of a shaken city were still in evidence. Local officials observed a moment of silence at a makeshift memorial on the Promenade des Anglais, the site of the carnage.
The promenade reopened to vehicular traffic Saturday afternoon. It had been closed to traffic for the Bastille Day fireworks celebration and remained closed after the attack as it was turned, in effect, into a 1.5-mile crime scene.
Many streets were still blocked, parents were still searching for missing children, and hospital staff members who have been dealing with scores of victims continued to treat dozens of patients, including many children, who had life-threatening injuries.