NICE (France): French authorities were trying to determine on Friday whether a Tunisian who killed at least 84 people by ploughing a truck into Bastille Day crowds had acted alone or with accomplices, but said the attack bore the hallmarks of religious militants.

Thursday night’s attack in the Riviera city of Nice plunged France again into grief and fear just eight months after gunmen killed 130 people in Paris. Those attacks, and one in Brussels four months ago, have shocked western Europe, already anxious over security challenges from mass immigration, open borders and pockets of Muslim radicalism.

The truck zigzagged along the city’s seafront Promenade des Anglais as a fireworks display marking the French national day ended on Thursday night. It careered into families and friends listening to an orchestra or strolling above the Mediterranean beach towards the century-old Hotel Negresco.

At least 10 children were among the dead. Of the scores of injured, 25 were on life support, authorities said.

The driver, 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, shot dead by officers at the scene, 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, sentenced to probation three months ago for throwing a wooden pallet at another driver.

The investigation “will try to determine whether he benefited from accomplices”, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. “It will also try to find out whether Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had ties to terrorist organisations. Although yesterday’s attack has not been claimed, this sort of thing fits in perfectly with calls for murder from such terrorist organisations.”

Bouhlel’s ex-wife was in police custody, Molins said. Police found one pistol and various fake weapons in his truck.

Dawn broke on Friday with pavements smeared with dried blood. Smashed children’s strollers, an uneaten baguette and other debris were strewn about the promenade. Small areas were screened off and what appeared to be bodies covered in blankets were visible through the gaps.

The truck was still where it had come to rest, its windscreen riddled with bullets.

“I saw this enormous white truck go past at top speed,” said Suzy Wargniez, a local woman aged 65.

At Nice’s Pasteur hospital, medical staff were treating large numbers of injuries.

Tunisian security sources said the suspect had last visited his hometown of Msaken four years ago. He had three children and was not known by the Tunisian authorities to hold radical views.

“France is filled with sadness by this new tragedy,” President Francois Hollande said in a dawn address.

A state of emergency imposed after the November attacks was extended by a further three months.

Nice-Matin journalist Damien Allemand had been watching the firework display when the truck tore by. After taking cover in a cafe, he wrote on his paper’s website of what he saw: “Bodies every five metres, limbs ... Blood. Groans.

“The beach attendants were first on the scene. They brought water for the injured and towels, which they placed on those for whom there was no more hope.”

Neighbours in the residential neighbourhood in northern Nice where Bouhlel lived described him as a handsome but unsettling man, with a tense personality.

Police carried out a controlled explosion on a white van near the home, blowing the doors open and leaving shattered glass all around, but it was not clear whether they found anything incriminating.

Bouhlel’s Tunisian hometown Msaken is about 10km outside the coastal city of Sousse, where a gunman killed 38 people, mostly British holidaymakers, on a beach a year ago.

“We will further strengthen our actions in Syria and Iraq,” Hollande said, calling the tragedy — on the day France marks the 1789 revolutionary storming of the Bastille prison in Paris — an attack on liberty by fanatics who despised human rights.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2016