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Nice: France has begun three days of national mourning as Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned his people they must "live with terrorism" after the country suffered its third mass killing in 19 months.
Mourners gathered at the eerily empty Promenade des Anglais where 84 people were mowed down and 202 more injured when 31-year-old Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel used a rented refrigerated truck as a weapon to cause mass killings. Normally the Mediterranean strip would be bursting with tourists but restaurants, cafes and beauty parlours all remained shut. Two small tea-light candles flickered outside the entrance to the Studio 47 nightclub, also closed.
Assan Toihri operates a drink stand on the promenade where the Lahouaiej-Bouhlel's two-kilometre deadly rampage through the crowd watching the Bastille Day fireworks was brought to a halt and he was shot and killed.
Mr Toihri recalled watching the truck zigzag in a deliberate attempt to crush as many people as possible. Ten of the victims were children and teenagers.
"It was catastrophic, catastrophic, catastrophic," he said and confessed to not having slept since the horror. He said he did not know when the seaside businesses would be reopened and when he could return to work under the palm trees.
The socialist President Francois Hollande visited Nice the day after the attack and condemned it as an "unspeakable act".
"Why Nice? Because it is a world famous city, one of the most beautiful cities on the planet. Why on the 14th of July? Because it is a celebration of freedom," he said.
Mr Hollande extended the state of emergency declared after the attacks in Paris in November in which 130 people were killed. It had been due to expire on July 26. In an all-too-familiar experience, flags were lowered to half-mast across France on Friday.
Mr Valls said "times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism" – comments certain to expose him to right-wing attack.
French authorities were trying to determine on Friday whether the French-Tunisian truck driver had acted alone or with accomplices, but said the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamist militants.
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel 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, and was 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 Islamist 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," Mr Molins added.
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel's ex-wife was in police custody, Mr Molins said. He had three children. Police found one pistol and various fake weapons in his truck.
France is home to the European Union's biggest Muslim population, mostly descended from immigrants from North African former colonies. It maintains a secular culture that allows no place for religion in schools and civic life, which supporters say encourages a common French identity but critics say contributes to alienation in some communities.
The Paris attack in November was the bloodiest among a number in France and Belgium in the past two years. On Sunday, a weary nation had breathed a sigh of relief that the month-long Euro 2016 football tournament had ended without serious incident.
Four months ago, Belgian Islamists linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in Brussels. Recent weeks have also seen major attacks in Bangladesh, Turkey and Iraq.
With Reuters
