Islamic State group claims Nice attacker as a ‘soldier’

He drove at the crowd in the Riviera city on Thursday night, zig-zagging along the seafront Promenade des Anglais for two kilometres as a fireworks display marking the French national day ended, until police eventually shot him dead. After the Islamic State group claimed Bouhlel as one of their own, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said told reporters the driver had been “radicalized very quickly”, citing information from the five people taken into custody following the attack.

Asked if he thought his neighbour, who he said had moved three years ago but returned often to visit his family, carried out the attack on behalf of the extremist group, he said: “I never heard him speak about extremism, I can not believe that he was a member of Islamic State”. But the statement quoting an IS security member said the man was following calls from the group to target citizens of countries fighting it.

French authorities said they were checking the claim. Authorities had been working to find out whether his motives were indeed connected to radical Islam.

Saturday’s arrests, which came on top of two others since the killing, including the attacker’s wife, concerned his “close entourage”, police sources said.

Fellow Tunisians in Nice said they hoped the attack wouldn’t reflect badly on them.

A Reuters journalist reported that about 40 elite police raid a small apartment near the central station, where one individual was arrested. It careered into families and friends listening to an orchestra or strolling above the Mediterranean beach towards the century-old grand Hotel Negresco.

The government’s instant alert app, created after last November’s terrorist attacks across Paris and launched last month just before the Euro 2016 football tournament, is supposed to send instant warnings, information and advice directly to people’s phones if a bombing, shooting or other terrorist incident happens near them.

“Each time he had a crisis, we took him to the doctor who gave him medication”, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel told BFM television.

Bouhlel was known to police for petty crimes but was not on a watch list of suspected militants.

He had one criminal conviction for road rage, having been sentenced to probation three months ago for throwing a wooden pallet at another driver.

Ahead of the claim by the Islamic State group, French officials had not disclosed any direct evidence linking Bouhlel with jihadism.

“We know of course that there are still flaws and shortcomings”, said Hollande, who previously described the attack in Nice as being of an “undeniable terrorist nature”.