France identifies Nice attacker, probes links to radical Islam

PanARMENIAN.Net - France began a period of national mourning for the 84 people killed when a Tunisian man rammed a truck into a crowd, as investigators tried to establish on Saturday, July 16 if he was motivated by radical Islam, AFP reports.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack in which Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a mass of people celebrating France's Bastille Day in the Riviera city of Nice.

Some 30,000 people had thronged the Promenade Des Anglais to watch a fireworks display with their friends and families on a night which turned to horror as the rampaging truck left mangled bodies strewn across the palm-fringed road.

President Francois Hollande said the country would observe three days of mourning as he warned the death toll could rise further, with more than 50 people still fighting for their lives, AFP says.

Investigators were piecing together a profile of the driver, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a man with a record of petty crime, but no known connection to terrorist groups.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the attacker probably had links to radical Islam, but Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cautioned it was too early to make the connection, AFP says.

Anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said the 31-year-old Tunisian was "completely unknown" to the intelligence services but that the assault was "exactly in line with" calls from jihadist groups to kill.