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Who was the Bastille Day truck attacker? Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel: who was the Bastille Day truck attacker?
(35 minutes later)
A massive police operation is under way in France to establish whether a 31-year-old French citizen of Tunisian origin acted alone or with accomplices in his attack on Bastille Day celebrations in Nice. The man responsible for Thursday evening’s murderous attack in Nice appears to have been a violent petty criminal, unknown to the French security services, who was born in Tunisia but living and working in the coastal city.
The man – who was shot dead by police after killing 84 people and injuring scores more – has been named locally as Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel.
According to widespread French media reports, the 31-year-old was a delivery driver from the town of M’saken, near the city of Sousse where dozens of foreign tourists were shot dead on a beach last year. He had reportedly last visited the town four years ago.
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According to police sources and French media reports, the refrigerated truck used in the attack, which killed at least 84 people and injured hundreds more when it drove into crowds on the city’s Promenade des Anglais, was rented two days ago in nearby Saint-Laurent-du-Var. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was shot dead by two police officers at the end of his deadly Bastille Day rampage on the Promenade des Anglais, after apparently opening fire with a pistol. An inactive grenade was also found in the truck.
The driver was shot dead in the truck after reportedly opening fire with a pistol on police who had surrounded the vehicle. Among items recovered from inside were an identity card, mobile phone and bank card, all linked to the driver. The married father of three was reported to have had a long criminal record and little apparent interest in religion. Echoing the remarks of French officials, security sources in Tunisia said he was not known by the Tunisian authorities to hold radical or Islamist views.
He was formally identified by police on Friday morning as they launched a series of coordinated operations across the city. The first clues to the Nice attacker’s identity emerged quickly in the immediate aftermath of the attack. As police combed through the bullet-riddled truck, rented from a truck hire location not far from Nice, they recovered a mobile phone, bank card and driver’s licence – all pointing to the same individual.
The attacker, a 31-year-old Tunisian-born Frenchman who lived in Nice, was known to the police for common crimes – including violence – but not to the intelligence services, a police source said. That was Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a man known to the authorities for domestic violence, theft and violent assault with a weapon who, it seems, had last been convicted in March.
His substantial criminal record included domestic violence, theft, violence - including with a weapon - and using threats of violence. On Friday morning, police forensics officers were combing through the truck, which remained where it stopped, its front badly damaged and riddled with bullet holes, and its tyres burst. According to sources in the French police and reports in the French media, the refrigerated truck used in the attack, which drove into crowds on the city’s sea front, was rented two days ago in Saint-Laurent-du-Var, close to Nice.
Video footage showed the 19-tonne white truck speeding up as it drove into screaming crowds along the Promenade des Anglais while several people tried to chase it on foot. It mowed through the crowd for almost 2km before the driver was shot dead by police. That find quickly led officers from the elite RAID unit – which deals with violent crime and terrorism – to a modest five-storey apartment block in the Quartier des Abattoirs. Police broke into first floor apartment at 9.30 am on Friday.
According to reports, security camera footage showed that he forced metal security barriers on a road barring access to the celebrations to get through with his truck. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s neighbours described him as a quiet and “not very religious” man.
No groups have claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday, but the French president, François Hollande, said it was “terrorist in nature” and would be met by a show of “real force and military action in Syria and Iraq”. Speaking to reporters in the apartment building, they said he rarely spoke and did not return greetings when their paths crossed in the working-class neighbourhood of city.
Dramatic details emerged on Friday over how a member of the crowd celebrating Bastille Day on the seaside promenade had tried to stop the lorry just before the driver was shot dead. Among them was Sebastien, a neighbour who spoke on condition that his full name was not used, who said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel did not seem overtly religious, often dressed in shorts and sometimes wore work boots.
He had a van parked nearby and owned a bike, which he brought up into his first-floor apartment.
Of those who were interviewed, only one, a neighbour on the ground floor, said she had had any concerns about him – describing him as “a good-looking man who kept giving my two daughters the eye”. Other people who knew him – quoted in the French media – described an individual interested in girls and salsa music.
Another neighbour, identified only as Jasmine, aged 40, told the Guardian: “He was quite handsome, greyish hair, looked a bit like George Clooney. He never answered when we spoke or said hello, he just sort of stared at us aggressively.
“I was really scared of him. All I knew is that he had trouble with his wife, but we never saw her or their kids. He spent a lot of his time at a bar down the street where he gambled and drank.”
There were conflicting reports as to whether Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was a French citizen of Tunisian birth or, as later reports said, a Tunisian citizen living in France on a work permit.
Commentators and anti-terrorism experts, however, were quick to see parallels with others who have been involved in attacks in Europe, including Mohamed Merah, who launched gun attacks in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012, and shared the same background of petty crime before he was radicalised.
Anti-terrorism investigators – to whom the case was handed on Friday – will now need to focus on establishing whether the attacker acted alone and what motivated him to launch his murderous assault.
In practical terms, too, police will have questions to answer, including how – in the midst of a high-level security alert and state of emergency – he was able to get through a security perimeter to launch his attack.
“Investigations are currently underway to establish if the individual acted alone or if he had accomplices who might have fled,” interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said, announcing the investigation.
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“Someone in the crowd jumped on the lorry to try and stop it,” said Eroic Ciotti on Europe 1. “It was at that moment that the police were able to stop the terrorist. He had fired on the police without hitting them and on the person who tried to stop him.” One of a community of 40,000 Tunisians living in Nice – among a wider community of 120,000 in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region – he was not, say neighbours in the Quartier des Abattoirs, a familiar figure in the 18 or so mosques in the city.
A witness called Nader told BFM television he had seen the whole attack from start to finish, and had initially thought the driver had lost control. Instead, say neighbours, his interests were more worldly. All of which inspires the questions – in what way, and where, he was radicalised?
“He stopped just in front of me after he [crushed] a lot of people. I saw a guy in the street, we were trying to speak to the driver to get him to stop. He looked nervous. There was a girl under the car, he smashed her. The guy next to me pulled her out.” One focus of the investigation is likely to look at connections in Nice itself – a city which has in recent years emerged a centre of radicalisation and jihadi recruitment, not least through the network of Omar Omsen, also known Oumar Diaby, whose name has repeatedly surfaced in French counter-terrorism investigations.
Nader said he saw the driver pull out a gun and start shooting at police. “They killed him and his head was out the window.”