Truck 'terrorist' kills 80 in Nice Bastille Day crowd

Truck 'terrorist' kills 80 in Nice
Bastille Day crowd

A
"terrorist" gunman killed 80 people and wounded scores when he drove
a heavy truck at high speed into a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks in the
French Riviera city of Nice late on Thursday, officials said.

In
a pre-dawn address to the nation, President Francois Hollande called up
military and police reservists to relieve forces worn out by an eight-month
state of emergency begun after the Islamic State militant group killed 130
people in Paris. The state of emergency has been extended.

"France
is filled with sadness by this new tragedy," Hollande said, noting several
children were among the dead in what he said he had no doubt was an act of
terrorism.

He
called the carnage, which came as France celebrated the anniversary of the 1789
revolutionary storming of the Bastille, an attack on liberty by fanatics who
despised human rights.

France
would, nonetheless, continue military operations in Syria and Iraq.

Interior
Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 80 people died and 18 were in a critical
condition, with many more also wounded.

Counter-terrorist
investigators were seeking to identify the driver, who a local government
official said opened fire before police shot him dead. The official said
weapons and grenades were found inside the 25-tonne, unmarked articulated
truck.

Officials
said hundreds were hurt as the driver wove along the seafront, knocking them
down "like skittles".

The
attack, which came eight months and a day after Islamic State gunmen and
suicide bombers struck the French capital on a festive Friday evening, seemed
so far to be the work of a lone assailant. Newspaper Nice-Matin quoted
unidentified sources as saying the driver was a 31-year-old local of Tunisian
origin.

"A
SCENE OF HORROR"

The
truck careered for hundreds of meters along the famed Promenade des Anglais
seafront, slamming into spectators watching the fireworks, listening to an
orchestra or strolling above the beach toward the grand, century-old Hotel
Negresco.

"It's
a scene of horror," member of parliament Eric Ciotti told France Info
radio, saying the truck "mowed down several hundred people." Jacques,
who runs Le Queenie restaurant on the seafront, told the station: "People
went down like ninepins."

Bystander
Franck Sidoli, who was visibly shocked, said: "I saw people go down."

"Then
the truck stopped, we were just five meters away. A woman was there, she lost
her son. Her son was on the ground, bleeding," he told Reuters at the
scene.

Nice-Matin
posted photographs of the truck, its windshield starred by a score of bullets
and its radiator grille destroyed.

Major
events in France have been guarded by troops and armed police since the Islamic
State attacks last year, but it appeared to have taken many minutes to halt the
progress of the truck as it tore along pavements and a pedestrian zone.

Police
told residents of the city, 30 km (20 miles) from the Italian border, to stay
indoors as they conducted further operations, although there was no sign of any
other attack.

Hours
earlier, Hollande, who raced back to Paris from the south of France after the
attack, had said the state of emergency would end in two weeks. He has now
extended it by three months, calling up former troops and gendarmes.

Islamic
State militants killed 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13, the bloodiest in a
number of attacks in France and Belgium in the past two years. On Sunday, a
weary nation had breathed a collective sigh of relief as the month-long Euro
2016 soccer tournament across France ended without a feared attack.

U.S.
President Barack Obama said in a statement: "On behalf of the American
people, I condemn in the strongest terms what appears to be a horrific
terrorist attack in Nice, France, which killed and wounded dozens of innocent
civilians."

The
United Nations Security Council said it "condemned in the strongest terms
the barbaric and cowardly terrorist attack".