Up to 80, including children, killed as truck plows into crowd in French resort city of Nice

NICE, France --Up to 80 people were killed when a truck plowed into a crowd watching a Bastille Day fireworks display in the southern French resort of Nice late Thursday.

French President Francois Hollande, in a televised address, said "several children" were among the dead as he extended the state of emergency in the country for three months, stressing the "terrorist nature" of the attack was "undeniable."

The latest death toll, which had steadily risen since the original estimate of 60, was given by French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve who also said 18 of the estimated hundred injured were in a "critical condition."

Nice prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre said the truck drove two kilometers through a large crowd that was watching the fireworks.

The driver had also opened fire on the crowd, local government chief Christian Estrosi told BFM TV, and weapons and grenades were found inside the truck after he was killed.

If confirmed as an act of terror, the incident will be the third major attack on French soil in 18 months -- with several smaller-scale jihadist killings also having taken place.

Identity papers belonging to a 31-year-old French-Tunisian were found inside the truck, a police source said.

"The identification of the truck driver is still underway," said the source. The identity papers indicate the man is a resident of Nice.

The French government denied there was a hostage-taking incident after the attack.

"There is no hostage-taking," interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told AFP, denying dozens of rumors following the incident. "An individual drove a truck into the crowd. He was killed by police."

"Investigations are currently under way to establish if the individual acted alone or if he had accomplices who might have fled," Brandet said.

Anti-terrorism investigators have taken over the probe, prosecutors said.

Sub-prefect Sebastien Humbert described the incident as a clear criminal attack, although the driver was not yet identified. Residents of the Mediterranean city close to the Italian border were advised to stay indoors. There was no sign of any other attack.

"Dear Nicois," local mayor Christian Estrosi tweeted, "The driver of a truck appears to have killed dozens of people. Stay at home for the time being. More news to follow."

The incident comes as France remains badly shaken by November 2015 attacks which killed 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris and nightspots across the city.

An AFP reporter described seeing a white truck driving at high speed onto the famed Promenade des Anglais as people were leaving.

"We saw people hit and bits of debris flying around," he said.

Terrified pedestrians screamed as they fled the area. "It was absolute chaos," he added.

Regional newspaper Nice Matin quoted its reporter at the scene saying there were many injured people and blood on the street. It published a photograph of a damaged, long-distance delivery truck, which it said was riddled with bullets and images of emergency services treating the injured.

Damien Allemand, the paper's correspondent, was quoted as saying: "People are running. It's panic. He rode up onto the Prom and piled into the crowd ... There are people covered in blood. There must be many injured."

Social media carried images of people lying apparently lifeless in pools of blood.

US President Barack Obama condemned "what appears to be a horrific terrorist attack", although no group had claimed responsibility for the incident.

US government agencies have received constant reports of Islamic State threats to attack France and those threats are regarded as current, a US security official said. However, two US officials said they had no information at this point about whether militants were involved in the Nice incident.

CNN said it has spoken to a witness, identified as an American pilot, who saw the truck ramming the crowd. The witness said the driver mowed people down, accelerating as he hit them. The witness said there was only one person in the truck.

Local mayor Estrosi has warned in the past of the risk of Islamist attacks in the region, following Islamic State bloodshed in Paris and Brussels over the past 18 months.

French President Francois Hollande, who was in the south of France at the time, had hours earlier said a state of emergency put in place after the Paris attacks in November would not be extended when it was due to expire on July 26.

"We can't extend the state of emergency indefinitely, it would make no sense. That would mean we're no longer a republic with the rule of law applied in all circumstances," Hollande told journalists in a traditional Bastille Day interview.

source: interaksyon.com

France police raid homes, vow it's 'just the beginning'

PARIS - Police raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight following the Paris attacks, and a source close to the investigation said a Belgian national in Syria was suspected of orchestrating Friday's mayhem.

Prosecutors said one of the killers had been stopped and fingerprinted in Greece last month, fuelling speculation the Islamic State had taken advantage of the recent influx of refugees fleeing the Middle East to slip militants into Europe.

The Paris carnage, which killed 129 people, has led to calls for the European Union to close its borders to asylum seekers.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned France could be hit by new violence but said the Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks in retaliation for French airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, would never win.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told journalists on Monday police arrested 23 people and seized arms including rocket launchers in 168 raids overnight. Another 104 people were put under house arrest, he said.

"Let this be clear to everyone, this is just the beginning, these actions are going to continue," Cazeneuve said.

French warplanes pounded Islamic State positions in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa late Sunday -- its biggest such strike since it started assaults as part of a US-led mission launched in 2014.

The investigation into the coordinated Paris attacks, the worst atrocity in France since World War Two, led swiftly to Belgium after police discovered that two of the cars used by the militants had been rented in the Brussels region.

By Sunday, Belgian officials said they had arrested seven people in Brussels, while another man -- one of three brothers believed to have been involved in the plot -- was being hunted.

A source close to the investigation said Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, currently in Syria, was suspected of having ordered the Paris operation. "He appears to be the brains behind several planned attacks in Europe," the source told Reuters.

French prosecutors say they have identified five of the seven suicide attackers who died on Friday. Four were French, while the fifth man was fingerprinted in Greece in October and was possibly Syrian.

Valls said that since this summer, French intelligence services had prevented five attacks.

"We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries," Valls told RTL radio. "We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time."

Syrian connection

The death toll was revised back down to 129 following a counting error. Dozens of people remain in intensive care.

France has declared three days of national mourning and President Francois Hollande will make a rare address to the joint upper and lower houses of parliament later in the day at the Palace of Versailles, just outside Paris.

Schools in Paris re-opened on Monday, and many museums were due to open their doors in the afternoon after a 48-hour shutdown, but some popular tourist sites, including Disneyland, remained closed.

Police have named just two French attackers -- Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris, and Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy. Media named the two other French assailants as Bilal Hadfi and Ibrahim Abdeslam.

The man stopped in Greece in October was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad. Police said they were still checking to see if the document was authentic, but said the dead man's fingerprints matched those on record in Greece.

Greek officials said the passport holder had crossed from Turkey to the Greek islands last month and then registered for asylum in Serbia before heading north, following a route taken by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers this year.

The news revived a furious row within the European Union on how to handle the flood of refugees. Top Polish and Slovak officials poured cold water on an EU plan to relocate asylum seekers across the bloc, saying the violence underlined their concerns about taking in Muslim refugees.

Britain announced on Monday it would boost its intelligence agency staff by 15 percent and more than double spending on aviation security to defend against Islamist militants plotting attacks from Syria.

A source in British Prime Minister David Cameron's office said police had foiled one attack against the country last month.

Valls said the French authorities would use every means at their disposal to counter the Islamist threat, adding that mosques harboring extremists would be shuttered and foreigners expelled if they "held unacceptable views against the republic". (Additional reporting by Matthias Blamont, John Irish, Leigh Thomas, Ingrid Melander, Michael Nienaber, Marine Pennetier, Robert-Jan Bartunek and Claire Watson)

source: interaksyon.com