UPDATE 7/15 3:20 p.m. ET: One University of California, Berkeley, student is unaccounted for and at least three other students from the school were injured in the attack in Nice. The missing student, Nicolas Leslie, is a junior and one of 85 Berkeley students participating in a study abroad program in Nice, the university said in a statement on Friday.
“Campus study abroad, risk services office and student affairs staff are working with fellow students in France, the program director on the ground, local officials, U.S. consular officials and the family to locate him,” the school said in the statement.
A friend said that Leslie was last seen running from the scene and had not been hit by the truck. Two of the injured students suffered broken legs and one sustained a broken foot. The university has temporarily suspended the 15-day program.
UPDATE 7/15 1:40 p.m. ET: France’s justice minister, Jean-Jacques Urvoas, told reporters in Paris that the suspect, Mohamed Bouhlel, “was at the center of several procedures but was sentenced for only one incident” earlier this year, the AP reports. Bouhlel was placed on probation after throwing a wooden pallet at someone during a confrontation, and he had to present himself at a Nice police station once a week and post bail during his probation period.
Various vigils have been planned around France to honor those who were killed in the tragic incident. The mayor of Avignon, France, has called for a large rally in front of city hall, and other vigils have been planned in towns such as Poitiers, Creusot and Pau, according to the AP. The Eiffel Tower will be lit in the colors of the French flag, and other monuments around the world, such as London’s Palace of Westminster, will be beaming bright in red, white and blue, CNN reports.
Brazilian authorities have said that the Nice attack has lead them to review security for the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, and they will likely be increasing the number of checkpoints, the AP reports.
UPDATE 7/15 12:18 p.m. ET: Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins, said that 202 people were wounded in the Nice Bastille Day attack, with 25 on life support and 52 in critical condition, according to the AP. Molins confirmed the death toll is still at 84.
UPDATE 7/15 9:50 a.m. ET: French President Francois Hollande said the death toll is expected to rise in the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France. According to The Associated Press, he said that around 50 people are hovering between life and death after a suspect drove a truck through a crowd and opened fire, killing at least 84 people.
Hollande said the truck attack was done “to satisfy the cruelty of an individual, and maybe a group,” adding that France is “facing a struggle, which will be long.”
UPDATE: French media have identified the truck driver who launched an attack on Nice’s Bastille Day crowd as a 31-year-old French-Tunisian man. According to the AFP, a police source revealed the man had been identified by papers found inside the cab of his vehicle. He was a resident of Nice. The death toll so far stands at 84 with children among the dead and injured.
ORIGINAL STORY: At least 80 people were killed and many more injured after a man drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, on Thursday, July 14, CNN reports.
An eyewitness told The Associated Press that he saw the driver drive right into a crowd of revelers before getting out of the vehicle with a gun, shooting in all directions.
“There was carnage on the road,” Wassim Bouhlel, a Nice native, told The AP. “Bodies everywhere.” Another witness told Fox News that police later shot and killed the unidentified gunman. Images released showed police trucks riddled with bullets, a result of a gunfight between the suspect and police.
According to NBC News, a spokesperson for France’s Interior Ministry tweeted that the person who was driving the truck had been “neutralized.” Nice mayor Christian Estrosi elaborated on that and told BMF TV that police said they had killed the driver.
Estrosi, who was at the Bastille Day celebration when the attack took place, said that the truck was loaded with arms and grenades, according to the AP.
He also tweeted in French, urging people to stay home. He later added: “This is the worst tragedy in the history of Nice with more than 70 victims already reported.”
President Francois Hollande later said that the deadly incident was without a doubt a “terror attack.”
“Horror again has struck France”: Pres. Hollande addresses nation after Nice truck attack https://t.co/0QgnyIizuL https://t.co/DE5M9JXkV2
— CNN (@CNN) July 15, 2016
According to the UK’s Telegraph, a local journalist reported: “People ran, there was panic. He drove onto the promenade and ploughed into the crowd. There is a huge amount of blood and without doubt a lot of people have been hurt.”
An eyewitness told the Telegraph that the scene was “absolute chaos” and that there were police “flooding the streets, including anti-terrorism officers.”
“Nobody knows what to do, except to hide away,” the eyewitness said.
President Barack Obama condemned “what appears to be a horrific terrorist attack” in a statement that the White House shared on Twitter. “We have offered any assistance that they may need to investigate this attack and bring those responsible to justice,” he wrote. “We stand in solidarity and partnership with France, our oldest ally, as they respond to and recover from this attack.”
.@POTUS on the attack in Nice, France: pic.twitter.com/CrbChxZs04
— White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) July 14, 2016
An image of smoke surrounding the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris that has been going viral has been determined unrelated to the attack in Nice.
JUST IN: Smoke seen over Eiffel Tower in social media image; police say fireworks ignited, unrelated to Nice attack pic.twitter.com/NWtPn3Qq2d
— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) July 14, 2016
Marking the Storming of the Bastille in 1789, Bastille Day is a bank holiday in France, and restaurants and hotels were packed with revelers.
Updates to come.
