The militant group Islamic State issued a tenuous-sounding claim of responsibility for the truck rampage in Nice, France, that killed at least 84 people in this seaside resort, and the country’s top security official for the first time cited the possibility that the slain attacker may have been “radicalized.”
The claim, carried by the group’s Amaq news agency, may have simply been an opportunistic bid to capitalize on worldwide publicity accompanying the third major strike on French soil in the past year and a half. Amaq cited a “security source” in the radical group as saying the attack, which injured more than 200 people, was carried out by “one of the soldiers of the Islamic State.”
In Nice, still packed with Riviera vacationers, the day brought more faltering steps toward normalcy, with one side of the broad waterfront promenade where Thursday night’s attack took place reopening to the public. But wrenching signs of the attack remained, with some frantic families still searching for missing loved ones, and many victims still hospitalized, dozens of them gravely injured.
An enormous heap of flowers, some adorned with notes and messages, lay on the ground near police barricades. Riders in the Tour de France, the celebrated bicycle race, took off their helmets and observed a moment of silence for the victims before embarking on Saturday’s route. The Eiffel Tower was lit Friday night with the tricolors in a symbol of solidarity.
But amid the outpouring of sympathy, there was growing public anger over the perception that the huge holiday gathering on the Promenade des Anglais had been too lightly guarded for such a tempting target, particularly in light of relatively recent bloodshed, like the devastating attacks in Paris only eight months earlier.
Authorities were searching for clues as to the motive of the attacker, who died in a hail of police gunfire. He was identified as Tunisian-born driver-deliveryman Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, and described by neighbors and associates as an angry, disaffected loner.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said investigators believed that Bouhlel had “radicalized his views very rapidly,” but gave no details about evidence pointing to an ideological motive.
The French prosecutor said Saturday that five people were in custody in connection with the attacks, but authorities have not publicly disclosed any sign that any of them acted as accomplices to Bouhlel. Authorities say he rented the commercial delivery truck that he drove onto the crowded coastal boulevard, mowing down spectators who had gathered for the Bastille Day fireworks display.
In Nice, the new assertion from Islamic State did little to answer questions about what could have motivated such an attack.
“I don’t know if I believe it or not. Of course it sounds like the things ISIS does, but why did they take so long to ‘claim’ responsibility?” Marie Baudin, 42, a mother of three, said of the terror group. “It seems like this man was just a strange person, a weirdo. Full of hate. A maniac.”
Philippe Severin, 29, an accountant, said he was “not surprised” by the claim. “Those savages are capable of anything,” he said. “It makes no difference anyway. What has been done has been done. My heart is breaking for the families of the victims.”
France was still struggling to come to terms with the notion that crude weapons such as a 19-ton truck could be wielded in such lethal fashion — and Cazeneuve suggested that such attacks held special appeal to untrained “individuals who are responding positively to the messages issued by the Islamic State.”
Despite round-the-clock efforts to identify bodies and notify next of kin, some families still were uncertain of loved ones’ fate. Relatives and friends of a 42-year-old Muslim woman of Moroccan descent, Aldijia Bouzaouit, handed out fliers to passers-by and pleaded for any information.
“We’ve looked everywhere!” said Mensi Seloua, the missing woman’s distraught sister, who said Bouzaouit was a mother of four who had lived in Nice all her life. “We’ve tried all the hospitals.”
Although many Muslims were among the dead and injured in the rampage, some in Nice’s large North African community feared being tarred by Bouhlel’s act of murderous violence.
latimes.com
