NICE, France (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed responsibility yesterday for the truck attack that killed at least 84 people celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice and police arrested three more people there in connection with the seafront carnage.
“The person who carried out the operation in Nice, France, to run down people was one of the soldiers of Islamic State,” the Amaq news agency affiliated with the militant Islamist group said on its Telegram account.
“He carried out the operation in response to calls to target nationals of states that are part of the coalition fighting Islamic State.”
French authorities have yet to produce any evidence that the 31 year-old Tunisian killer, shot dead by police in the attack, had turned to radical Islam. Nevertheless, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel may have undergone a rapid change.
“It seems that he was radicalised very quickly — in any case these are the elements that have come up from the testimony of the people around him,” Cazeneuve told reporters.
Speaking from his home town in Tunisia, Bouhlel’s sister told Reuters he had been having psychological problems when he left for France in 2005.
Other relatives and friends interviewed in Nice doubted he had militant Islamist leanings.
Yesterday’s arrests concerned his “close entourage”, police sources said. Two other people, including the attacker’s wife, had already been detained.
Bouhlel had been in France for 10 years and lived locally.
