Nice attack: 50 people ‘between life and death’, says Hollande
Fifty people injured in the Bastille Day attack in Nice are in a critical condition “between life and death”, French President Francois Hollande has said.
Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters
At least 84 people died, including more than 10 children, after a lorry crushed them along 2km (1.2 miles) of the Promenade des Anglais on Thursday.
The driver, named by sources as French-Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, was shot dead by police.
Guns and a grenade found inside the lorry were reported to be fakes.
President Hollande, who is in Nice, said the attack was of “an undeniable terrorist nature”.
He said the battle against terrorism would be long as France faced an enemy “that will continue to attack those people and those countries that count liberty as an essential value”.
Mr Hollande said the attack was carried out “to satisfy the cruelty of an individual or possibly a group” and that many of the victims were foreigners and young children.
“We will overcome the suffering because we are a united France,” he said.
A state of emergency, in place since November’s Paris attacks carried out by militants from the so-called Islamic State group, in which 130 people died, has been extended by three months.
Who were the victims?
Some 30,000 people were on the Promenade des Anglais at the time of the attack, officials said.
Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters
Tourists and residents of Nice were among those who died. They included two American citizens – a father and his 11-year-old son – a Ukrainian, a Russian and a Swiss woman.
The son of Fatima Charrihi said she was the first to die. He said she “practised Islam in the proper way. A real Islam, not the terrorists’ version”.
Fondation Lenval, the children’s hospital in Nice, says it has treated some 50 children and adolescents, including two who died during or after surgery. BBC
