NICE, France: French investigators arrested two more people yesterday as they pieced together details about the motives and preparations of the Tunisian who rammed a truck into a crowd in an IS-claimed attack that killed 84.
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel visited the Nice promenade with his rented truck on the two days before he smashed the vehicle into a crowd of people watching Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city on Thursday night, according to a source close to the probe.
Mangled bodies were left strewn across the storied seafront, including children, in the grisly attack by a man described by those who knew him as a loner with tendencies towards violence and depression.
In Nice, many people were still desperately looking for news of their loved ones among the dead and 121 still hospitalised.
“We have no news, neither good nor bad,” said Lithuanian Johanna, who was looking for her two friends, aged 20.
Juliette Meadel, state secretary for victims’ support, conceded the process was ‘long and cruel’.
At least 10 children were among the dead as well as tourists from the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Switzerland and Germany.
As the promenade re-opened and Nice struggled to come to terms with the horror of the attack, police had questioned hundreds of people who knew the Tunisian, said the investigative source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A man and a woman were arrested yesterday, and another five people including his estranged wife were still in custody.
While he had a record of being a petty criminal, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had never appeared on the radar of intelligence services for links to radical Islam. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday the father-of-three “seemed to have been radicalised very quickly, from what his friends and family” have told police.
Several people have told police that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, had shown signs of being religious, despite previous reports from those who knew him that he smoked, drank and never went to the mosque, said a source close to the investigation.
People who went to the same gym as Lahouaiej-Bouhlel – where he did salsa dancing and lifted weights — described him as ‘conceited’ and someone who ‘would flirt with anything that moved’.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the killings, saying that one of its ‘soldiers’ carried out the attack “in response to calls to target nations of coalition states that are fighting (IS)”. — AFP