French police in Nice have arrested three people early on Saturday (16) in connection with the Bastille day attack that killed at least 84 people when a speeding truck was driven into crowds in the Riviera city, police sources said.
French authorities were still trying to determine whether the 31-year old Tunisian driver of the vehicle had acted alone or with accomplices, and whether his motives were connected to radical Islam.
The arrests concerned the attacker’s “close entourage”, the sources said, and were made in two different areas of Nice. A Reuters reporter saw about 40 elite police raid a small appartment at Rue Miollis, north of the central station, where one individual was arrested.
French President Francois Hollande met his defence and security chiefs and cabinet ministers as political and media criticism mounted over security failings after the third major attack in France in 18 months.
“If we are at war, as the government tells us, then the currency of war is intelligence, learning from experience, analysing failures and victories,” wrote Yann Marec in an editorial for the southern region’s Midi Libre newspaper.
He was one of several calling for action, and not merely “the same old solemn declarations” from the government, as Le Figaro daily said.
Some 30,000 people had thronged the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais on Thursday night to watch a fireworks display with their friends and families, but the night turned to horror as the truck left mangled bodies strewn in its wake.
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