Another terrorist attack in France

[GMDino]

(07-15-2016, 12:11 PM)bfine32 Wrote: They have identified the Terrorist:

More:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/07/15/france-nice-attack/87115358/

Quote:French prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday that the driver of a truck that plowed into a crowd of seaside spectators in Nice, killing 84 people, was a Tunisia-born Frenchman who had a petty criminal record but was not known to any intelligence services, local or national, as having links to radicalism.


Molins, the anti-terrorism prosecutor, identified the suspect, who was shot and killed by police during the attack, as Mohamed Bouhlel, 31, a local delivery man. He said Bouhlel's house had been searched and that his wife was detained for questioning.


Speaking to reporters hours after an update by French President Francois Hollande, Molins said 202 people were injured in the melee at the Bastille Day celebration Thursday evening, and that 52 remained in critical condition, half of them still in a coma and 25 on life-support. He said 10 children were among the dead, which included two Americans.


Molins said Bouhlel, driving a large, white refrigerated truck, mowed down scores of people along a one-mile stretch of the Promenade des Anglais during an annual fireworks display. He said police eventually shot and killed him in the truck's cab as he continued to run down people along the walkway.



Parents of victims embrace each other near the scene of a truck attack in Nice, southern France, Friday, July 15, 2016. (Photo: Luca Bruno, AP)

Molins said police recovered a cellphone, identification papers, and a bank card in the cab of the truck along with a handgun, ammunition and a gas grenade, along with replicas of other weapons.


He said Bouhlel was identified through his fingerprints and was known to local courts and police. He had been convicted on charges of theft and making violent threats between 2010 and 2016, and received a six-month suspended sentence in March on a weapons charge.



Molins said suspect, who was born in Tunisia, was "entirely unknown" by French intelligence services at the local and and national level, and that there had "never been any indication of radicalism" associated with him.



The prosecutor said surveillance video showed that the truck had been parked on a Nice street on Wednesday and that Bouhlel, arriving on a bicycle, picked it up on Thursday, putting the bike in the back.


He said officials were investigating how Bouhlel obtained the truck and whether he had any accomplices in the attack.



This picture taken on July 15, 2016, with a mobile phone, shows forensics officers and policemen looking for evidence near a truck on the Promenade des Anglais seafront in the French Riviera town of Nice, after it drove into a crowd watching a fireworks display. (Photo: Valery Hache, AFP/Getty Images)

It was the worst terrorist attack in France since 130 people were killed in Paris in November and is likely the deadliest rampage ever by a lone attacker.


Hollande, who flew to Nice on Friday, said earlier that the attack was carried out "to satisfy the cruelty of an individual, maybe a group" and called on the French people to maintain their "unity and cohesion" in the face of the tragedy.


"We are dealing with a struggle that will take a long time, because we have an enemy who will continue to strike all peoples, all countries that have freedom as a fundamental value," he said.


Hollande, who described the attack as "despicable," extended the nation's state of emergency, due to expire this month, for another three months, and will supplement the 7,000 troops securing critical sites around France with a call up of reserves tasked with tightening border security.


"We can overcome this evil because we are France, as one," he added..


French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced three days of national mourning, starting Saturday.



"We will not give in to terrorist threats," he said. "We are in a new era. France has been struck once again in her flesh. They wanted to harm the very idea of national unity."