A horror of new kind: A driver mows a large truck into thousands of people celebrating the Bastille Day at the Promenade of Nice in southern France. 84 people among them 10 children were killed, dozens were injured, 18 of them are in critical condition.
Police shot the driver, found guns and hand grenades in the truck, an ID card hinting at a French-Tunisian man, 31.
The driver could only be stopped by a hail of bullets fired by police.
The man was known to police for petty crimes but not for terrorism. Investigation is trying to determine whether the driver had accomplices.
The driver ploughed on for 2km (1.2 miles) on the Promenade des Anglais at about 11 pm local time on Thursday.
Witnesses say the speeding lorry swerved and zigzagged in an apparent attempt to hit more people.
The identification of the victims is ongoing, majority of people killed were French, but also several tourists, foreign nationals.
French President Francois Hollande spoke of a “terrorist nature” of the attack.
The attack happened short before Paris was about to drop the state of emergency that was imposed in the country after the terrorist attacks in the Stade last November.
The world is in shock. Greek Foreign Ministry issued a statement expressing its “abhorrence”.
“We express our unequivocal condemnation and abhorrence of the new, deadly terrorist attack in France. Our thoughts are with the French people and the families of all the innocent victims, to whom we express our sincere condolences.
On the anniversary of the French Revolution, the cradle of the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity found itself once again the target of obscurantism and barbarity.
The act of barbaric terrorism is doomed to fail. We express our certainty that, in spite of extremists, France – the beacon of the ideas of the Enlightenment, democracy and freedom – will continue to unceasingly shed its light on Europe and the world.”
My deepest condolence and my thoughts are with the injured, the families of the victims and all those who experienced this horror last night.
