French PM booed during Nice attack memorial service

The Nice attack came eight months after IS jihadists killed 130 people across Paris, and 18 months after three days of terror at the Charlie Hebdo weekly and a Jewish supermarket killed 17.

“Mohamed didn’t pray, didn’t go to the mosque and ate pork”, said Sadok Bouhlel, 69, a retired teacher. On July 16, media reported that Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was loudly booed as he arrived at and left the ceremony on the Nice shore.

Flowers in their hands and tears in their eyes, crowds stood on the rocky beach for several minutes Monday looking toward the Promenade des Anglais, the road that had been cleared of traffic for Thursday’s holiday fireworks show.

Dozens of people remain in hospital after the attack. A large truck mowed through revelers gathered for Bastille Day fireworks in Nice, killing more than 80 people and sending people fleeing into the sea as it bore down for more than a mile along the Riviera city’s famed waterfront promenade.

But bitterness is also close to the surface.

President Francois Hollande’s Socialist administration has come under criticism from opponents over national security in the wake of recent terror attacks.

Former president and main opposition leader Nicolas Sarkozy said Sunday that “everything that should have been done the past 18 months was not done”.

“We are at war, outright war”.

“I want to reassure the French citizens that we do prevent terrorist attacks, although, there is no such thing a zero risk”, Valls stressed.

He called for electronic bracelets for anyone suspected of potential radicalization, and for expelling anyone suspected of possible terrorism links, direct or indirect.

But Mr Cazeneuve hit back on Monday, listing a series of laws and extra police forces created under Mr Hollande’s presidency “to face a threat that France was not prepared for” when he took over from Mr Sarkozy in 2012. Seven others had been detained earlier in connection with Friday’s attack.

French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (C) and French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve (2nd R) meet with soldiers of the operation Sentinelle on Monday in Avignon. Authorities brought three of them to French intelligence headquarters in Paris on Monday ahead of charging them with terrorism, the official said.

Investigators said they had discovered 11 telephones, cocaine and 2,600 euros ($2,900) in the home of one of the suspects, an Albanian national.