SHAFAQNA – A Bastille Day fireworks celebration was shattered by death and mayhem Thursday night in the southern French city of Nice when a large truck barreled for more than a mile through an enormous crowd of spectators, crushing and maiming dozens in what France’s president called a terrorist assault. It came eight months after the Paris attacks that traumatized the nation and all of Europe.
“France has been struck on the day of her national holiday,” he said. “Human rights are denied by fanatics, and France is clearly their target.”
The officials warned residents to stay indoors and canceled all further scheduled festivities in Nice, a seaside city of 340,000, including a five-day jazz festival and a concert on Friday night by Rihanna.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and the identity of the driver was not immediately clear, but the newspaper Nice Matin reported early Friday that he was a 31-year-old Frenchman of Tunisian origin.
The attack amounted to a gut-punch to a nation that was struggling to restore some sense of normalcy and had begun to drop its guard.
Hours after Mr. Hollande said during Bastille Day festivities in Paris that “we cannot prolong the state of emergency eternally,” a massive white truck came crashing through in Nice.
“Whatever the nature of what happened in Nice, the threat of terrorism is particularly high,” Mr. Brandet, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said on the iTele television station. He added that security forces were on high alert in the area and in cities around France.
Daesh, the militant group that asserted responsibility for the attacks in Paris, did not make any immediate claims for the assault in Nice.
It typically takes Daesh several hours, and sometimes up to one and even two days, to assert responsibility for attacks in Western countries. It typically does so through its Amaq channel on the encrypted telephone app Telegram, which serves as the group’s news wire.
However, as in the hours immediately after the Paris, Brussels and Orlando attacks, there was a now familiar celebration on channels run by groups that support Daesh, as well as on at least one channel affiliated with the group, also known as ISIS and ISIL. They cheered the carnage.
The attack in Nice took place just as the Euro 2016 soccer tournament had concluded. France had hosted the tournament, and the entire country had been on high alert. There had been reports that suspects linked to the attacks in Paris and the Brussels assault in March had planned an attack during the tournament.
Another witness who owns a restaurant nearby, whom iTele did not identify, said that when the truck plowed into the crowd, it “crushed everyone in its path.”