A “terrorist” gunman killed 80 people and wounded scores when he drove a heavy truck at high speed into a crowd that had watched Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city of Nice late on Thursday, officials said.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 80 people died and 18 were in a critical condition while many more were also wounded in the attack along the famed seafront Promenade des Anglais as the fireworks ended just after 10:30 p.m. (2030 GMT).
The driver also opened fire before police shot him dead.
In a pre-dawn address to the nation, President Francois Hollande said he was calling 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 was extended by three months.
“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.
A local government 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.
The truck careered for hundreds of metres along the front facing the Baie des Anges (Bay of Angels), slamming into families and friends listening to an orchestra or strolling above the beach towards 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 metres 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 from the Italian border, to stay indoors as they conducted further operations, although there was no sign of any other attack.
Hours earlier, Hollande 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 after racing back to Paris from the south of France in the wake of the attack.
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.
Four months ago, Belgian Islamists linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in Brussels.
One woman told France Info that she and others had fled in terror: “The lorry came zig-zagging along the street. We ran into a hotel and hid in the toilets with lots of people.”
Nice-Matin journalist Damien Allemand had been watching the traditional seaside firework display when the truck tore by just as it ended.
After taking cover in a cafe, he wrote on his paper’s website of what he saw when he came back out on the promenade: “Bodies every five metres, limbs … Blood. Groans.”
“The beach attendants were first on the scene. They brought water for the injured and towels, which they placed on those for whom there was no more hope.”
Nice, a city of some 350,000, has a history as a flamboyant, aristocratic resort but is also a gritty metropolis.
At Nice’s Pasteur hospital, medical staff were treating large numbers of injuries.
Waiting for friends who were being operated on, 20-year-old Fanny told Reuters she had been lucky.
“We were all very happy, ready to celebrate all night long .I saw a truck driving into the pedestrian area, going very fast and zig-zagging.
“The truck pushed me to the side. When I opened my eyes I saw faces I didn’t know and started asking for help … Some of my friends were not so lucky. They are having operations as we speak. It’s very hard, it’s all very traumatic,” she said. NAN
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