’Bring more weapons’: Nice killer’s final text
NICE, FRANCE • French authorities on Sunday arrested two more suspects potentially linked to the man who rammed a truck into crowds, killing 84 people in this French Riviera city, as investigators sought to determine his path to radicalization and whether he acted alone.
Authorities also said the attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, had sent a text message seeking more weapons and had visited the scene of the attack days before the carnage.
A total of seven people have been detained in connection to the attack, including Bouhlel’s ex-wife, though she was reportedly released from custody Sunday morning, according to authorities speaking to local media.
Bouhlel, 31, was a “soldier of the Islamic State,” the militant group declared Saturday. French authorities said the Tunisian-born attacker was inspired by terrorist organizations.
Twelve victims have not been identified, said France’s Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine, speaking to reporters on Sunday. A sixmonth-old child was among 18 people still in critical condition in the hospital. The number of wounded also rose to 256, according to the French prosecutor’s office, with 85 still hospitalized.
Meanwhile, French authorities released new details to local media of the last moments before the attack, suggesting Bouhlel might have had accomplices. The attacker, they said, had sent a text message to someone — believed to be among those currently held for questioning — saying, “Bring more weapons.”
The message was sent at 10:27 p.m., roughly a halfhour before the attack on the iconic Promenade Des Anglais, where tens of thousands were gathered to watch a Bastille Day fireworks display. The phone, police said, was found inside Bouhlel’s rented 19-ton refrigerator truck after he mowed down people for about two kilometres and was subsequently killed in a shootout.
French authorities on Sunday also provided more details that suggested the attack was carefully premeditated.
Speaking to local media, Jean-Michel Decugis, the head of the judicial police department, said Bouhlel was supposed to have returned the rental truck a day before the attack. On the two days before the attack, security camera footage showed him driving the truck on the Promenade Des Anglais, apparently staking it out, Decugis said. He added that Bouhlel also emptied out his bank account, according to one of the suspects in custody.
It remained unclear whether the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had directed the attack, was taking responsibility for an assault it inspired or was simply seeking publicity from an event in which it had no direct hand. The link underscores the difficulty of preventing the spread of extremist ideology in a world where even people like Bouhlel — whose family and neighbours portray him as a troubled loner — can be spurred to attack without training, resources or connections.