French President François Hollande on Friday on Friday said 50 people remained “between life and death” after a gunman crashed a truck into a crowd of Bastille Day revelers in Nice — killing at least 84 people and leaving more than 100 injured in his wake.
The driver was identified as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old French-Tunisian petty criminal, a federal law-enforcement source told The Post.
The staggering toll included 10 children dead and 202 people wounded – 52 of whom were in critical condition and 25 on life support, prosecutor Francois Molins said during a press briefing.
During the attack Thursday night, Bouhlel fired a gun at three police officers from the rented refrigerated truck, Molins said.
The cops gave chase but Bouhlel – who yelled “Allahu Akbar!” – Arabic for “God is great!” — managed to continue driving for another 1,000 feet before being surrounded by officers who shot him dead in a hail of bullets.
Bouhlel, a married delivery driver, was found in the passenger seat of the truck, which he had rented Monday and was supposed to have returned Wednesday, Molins said.
Authorities found a bicycle and eight empty pallets in the truck. In the cabin, they found a 7.65 mm handgun, some ammunition, and a replica handgun and two replica assault rifles, an M-16 and an AK-47, Molins said.
In addition, police also found a cell phone and several documents.
Bouhlel had driven the truck to a neighborhood in Nice a day before his attack and left it there overnight, Molins said. On Thursday, he rode his bike back to the truck, loaded it onto the vehicle and carried out his assault.
Bouhlel was identified using fingerprints and his estranged wife has been detained, Molins said.
He was sentenced this year to a six-month suspended sentence for violence with a weapon, but was “entirely unknown by intelligence services,” Molins said.
Hollande, who called the massacre a “terrorist” attack, arrived in Nice early Friday to hold an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and security officials.
“About 50 people are in an absolute urgency between life and death,” Hollande said after visiting victims at a hospital.
“Among the victims are French citizens as well as foreigners, who came from all continents. And there are a number of young children who came to watch fireworks with their families, who have been struck down just to satisfy the cruelty of one individual or possibly of a group,” he said.
Hollande, who was flanked by Valls, said that among those he visited were people who witnesses unbelievable carnage.
“They are suffering more because of the psychological trauma. Even people who have no signs of physical injury will carry throughout their lives the trauma of the horrific images they saw,” he said, The Guardian reported.
“I have tears in my spirit about this young policeman who acted so that the killer should be neutralized, and put an end to the carnage,” he said.
Warning: Graphic images below
Hollande earlier announced he would extend France’s state of emergency for three months and “step up” the government’s action against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq.
“We will continue striking those who attack us on our own soil,” said Hollande, who also called up army reservists to bolster security services that are stretched to the limit.
Among those killed were a father and son from an Austin area in Texas — Sean Copeland, 51, and 11-year-old Brodie, who were in Nice on a family vacation that started in Spain, where they visited Pamplona and Barcelona, the Austin American-Statesman reported.
“We are heartbroken and in shock over the loss of Brodie Copeland, an amazing son and brother who lit up our lives, and Sean Copeland, a wonderful husband and father,” the family said in a statement. “They are so loved.”
Shellshocked French citizens once again found themselves mourning their dead after the third mass killing in the country after the deadly attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that left 17 dead in January 2015 and the November 2015 massacre in Paris that left 130 dead.
The latest mass killing in France came just after the country successfully hosted the month-long Euro 2016 football championship, which passed off without a hitch despite fears of attacks.
“France was struck on its national day … the symbol of freedom,” Hollande said in a televised address Friday morning. The attack was of an “undeniable terrorist nature,” he said.
The driver barreled the 18-ton truck on the tree-lined Promenade des Anglais at high speed for about 1.3 miles through a crowd that had been enjoying a fireworks display on France’s July 14 national holiday.
An Egyptian tourist who filmed police shooting the driver said the truck ground to halt right in front of him after “smashing a girl” and leaving a trail of bodies.
“I kept waving to him, ‘Stop, stop! There are people under your truck!’” Nader El Shafei told The AP.
He said the driver pulled out a gun when police closed in on the stopped truck.
El Shafei said “the police started shooting. I saw the gun in his hand and I saw him shooting through the window.”
The officers left some 25 bullet holes in the windshield – which had not shattered. There was no indication that the glass was armored, but it appeared that it was hit only by bullets from standard-issue pistols, not high-powered assault rifles used by some law-enforcement units, Reuters reported.
Nice’s palm-lined Promenade des Anglais was left strewn with mangled, bloody bodies as hundreds fled in terror. Some also were reported to have ran into the sea to escape the horror.
In a video viewed over 4,500 times on Facebook, a trembling witness, Tarubi Wahid Mosta, recounted the massacre on the promenade.
“I almost stepped on a corpse, it was horrible. It looked like a battlefield,” he told AFP.
He took photographs of an abandoned doll and described the sense of despair amid the carnage.
“All these bodies and their families … they spent hours on the ground holding the cold hands of bodies dismembered by the truck. You can’t even speak to them or comfort them,” he said.
The attack targeted Bastille Day, which commemorates the start of the French Revolution. The day celebrates everything France holds dear — its secular republic and the values of “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” (Freedom, Equality, Fraternity).
In Nice, AFP reporter Robert Holloway witnessed the white truck driving at speed into the crowd, causing “absolute chaos.”
“We saw people hit and bits of debris flying around. I had to protect my face from flying debris,” he said.
Another witness named Nader told BFM-TV that he had seen the whole attack from start to finish, and had initially thought the driver had “lost control.”
“He stopped just in front of me after he (crushed) a lot of people. I saw a guy in the street, we were trying to speak to the driver to get him to stop,” he said. “He looked nervous. There was a girl under the car, he smashed her. The guy next to me pulled her out.”
On Friday morning, truck was still in the same spot, its front badly damaged and riddled with bullet holes and its tires ruptured.
In other developments:
- Tunisia’s consul in Nice said one of the 84 victims had been identified as Tunisian national Bilal Labawi, Reuters reported. The Tunisian government issued a statement condemning the attack: “Tunisia stands by France in its fight against terrorism and supports any measure taken by the French government to protect its territory and the security of its citizens and visitors.”
- Nice Airport was partially evacuated Friday and bomb squads called in after a suspicious package was reported in an arrivals lounge of Terminal 1, officials said. An NBC News reporter said he was held up at immigration for 30 minutes before passengers started being let through.
- Pop star Rihanna canceled her concert in Nice. “Due to the tragic events in #Nice, my concert scheduled for tomorrow July 15 at Allianz Stadium will not be going ahead as planned. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families,” she wrote on Instagram. Also canceled was the Nice Jazz Festival.
- Interpol said it was sending a team to the tragic city to help with victim identification and to monitor the agency’s terrorism databases. “On behalf of the world police community, Interpol condemns this cowardly and horrific attack in the strongest terms,” Secretary General Jürgen Stock said.
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram