IS group claims Nice attacker as a ‘soldier’

A man covered with a towel is apprehended by French police as the investigation continues two days after an attack by the driver of a heavy truck who ran into a crowd on Bastille Day killing scores and injuring as many on the Promenade des Anglais, in Nice, France, July 16, 2016.

The Islamic State group claimed Saturday that the Tunisian man who barreled his truck into a crowd in the French resort city of Nice was a “soldier” of the group.

“There was an understandably muted tone to the markets. the latest tragedies in France making everything seem a bit frivolous”, Spreadex analyst Connor Campbell said.

The arrests, which came on top of two on Friday including the attacker’s wife, concerned the attacker’s “close entourage”, the sources said. Three months earlier, gunmen killed 21 people in the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, and the attacks have had a crushing impact on Tunisia’s tourism sector. By contrast, the message of the Islamic State is to “kill anywhere and everywhere”, he said. But the statement quoting a security member of the group said the man was following calls from IS to target nationals of countries fighting it.

The ministry did not name the three in its statement Saturday, but said they were a family of a husband, wife and child. The driver was identified as Mohamed Bouhlel, a Tunisian deliveryman known to authorities as a petty criminal.

Stephanie Simpson, communications director at the Lenval foundation for children in Nice, said five children remained in critical condition, one was in a “very bad” condition, three were on artificial respiration, one has been stabilized and one eight-year-old child remains unidentified. She said her daughter called her in tears because she had been separated from her best friend, whom Kimberley was later reunited with and who was unharmed. “He would stare at the children a lot”, he added, standing in the lobby of the apartment building where Bouhlel lived.

The lobby of a nearby luxury hotel was transformed into an emergency treatment center for the shocked and injured, and all hospitals in the Nice area were put on alert to receive the injured.

On Saturday morning, the militant “Islamic State” (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack via one of its social media outlets.

Speaking to journalists at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Cazeneuve said Saturday that the case demonstrated the “extreme difficulty of the fight against terrorism”.

On Thursday night, a truck rammed into a large crowd that was celebrating Bastille Day in Nice.

‘He had psychological problems that caused a nervous breakdown; he would become angry, shout, break everything around him, ‘ Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel told the TF1 and France 2 channels. “They brought water for the injured and towels, which they placed on those for whom there was no more hope”. Assaults in January 2015 on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket were also claimed by Islamic State, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria but is now under military pressure from forces opposed to it. The attacker in Nice used a 19-ton delivery truck to approach the promenade along the city’s storied waterfront, where thousands of people had gathered, before turning left onto a crowded, palm-dotted avenue.