NICE • Bodies lay strewn along a well-known boulevard in this French Riviera city, after a truck driven by a lone assailant ploughed into a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks on Thursday night.
France has declared three days of mourning beginning today in the aftermath of the attack, which left 84 people dead, among them many foreigners and young children. About 50 others were in critical condition.
Witnesses described total chaos, with the sound of gunfire and people screaming as they fled.
The driver, identified by police sources as Tunisian-born Frenchman Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, was shot dead by police.
France was already living under a state of emergency imposed last November after Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) gunmen and suicide bombers struck Paris entertainment spots, killing 130 people.
French President Francois Hollande, who called the attack a terrorist act, said the state of emergency, which was to have expired on July 26, will be extended.
World leaders and public figures, including top Muslim clerics, reacted with horror and expressions of solidarity with France.
WASHINGTON POST
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