
France lorry attack: As it happened
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Summary
- A lorry has ploughed through a crowd during Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice
- At least 84 people are dead, including 10 children
- 202 were injured, 52 remain in critical condition, 25 are in intensive care
- The driver of the lorry was shot dead by police
- He has been identified as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, known to police for violence and petty theft







Live reporting
By Dominic Howell, Martha Buckley, Marysia Nowak and Ashley Gold
We're bringing to an end our live coverage of events in Nice, following Thursday's attack in which 84 people - including 10 children - died.
You can still follow all the latest updates on this story here.
Across France, people mourn those who lost their lives
Image of Bouhlel residence permit released
Police in Nice released this image of Bouhlel's residence permit.
Father: Nice attacker 'had nervous breakdowns'
Our Tunisia correspondent Rana Jawad is in Msaken and caught up with Bouhlel's father Monthir:
"He took his treatment, his medicine, and we thought he was doing well - here's the medical certificate. I took him to the psychologist, he followed his treatment but sometimes he would have nervous breakdowns and he would break everything and demolish everything. He has had a nervous problem and when he becomes nervous he breaks everything. He had problems with his wife and I think that added to his mental health issues."
Disbelief and shock in Bouhlel's birthpace in Tunisia
Our Tunisia correspondent Rana Jawad is in the town of Msaken, where Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel grew up. She says the town is in shock.
Many people who are in the town actually live in Nice, she says. "The whole town is full of Tunisian expats so to speak, who only come back during the holiday."
She reports how a short while ago Mohamed Bouhlel's father came by on a bicycle. He stopped to ask what she was filming, and spoke to her before continuing to cycle home.
We will bring you what he said shortly.
Obama: Do not punish Muslims
"In the wake of last night's attacks we've heard more suggestions that all Muslims in America be targeted, tested for their beliefs, some deported or jailed," Mr Obama said.
The US president was referring to a suggestion by Former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich that all US Muslims should be tested to see if they believed in Sharia - deporting those who did. Mr Obama said "the very suggestion is repugnant and an affront to everything that we stand for as Americans".
He went on: "We cannot give in to fear or turn on each other or sacrifice our way of life. We cannot let ourselves be divided by religion because that's exactly what the terrorists want. We should never do their work for them."
President Obama: 'We will not relent'
It's not just the US, but the entire world that is standing with the French today, said President Obama. The attack is a "threat to all of us", he said.
"We pledge to stand with our French friends as we defend our nations against this scourge of terrorism and violence," he said. He noted recent attacks in the US, Turkey, Iraq and Bangladesh.
Terrorists are targeting people of all backgrounds, he said.
"We will not relent" against terrorism, he said, and so-called Islamic State ideologies can be defeated.
"France is America's oldest ally. We owe our freedom to each other. We will stand united now."
Who was Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel?
The attacker was a 31-year-old Tunisian man known to police, but not previously linked to jihadist groups.
He was married with three children, but no longer lived with his wife.
A woman who knows the family told the BBC that Lahouaiej Bouhlel was thrown out of their home in the Le Ray area of Nice more than a year ago after allegedly beating his wife.
Other neighbours described him as a "quiet loner".
More here.
BreakingFrench minister at odds with PM?
"We have an individual who was not known to intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islam," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told French TV. Asked if he could confirm the attacker's motives were linked to jihadism, he said: "No".
Lifeless with a doll
A Reuters agency photo of a child lifeless next to her doll after the attacks is horrifying stunned social media users.
Nice suspect's neighbour: He was 'frightening', 'not normal'
A woman who says she is the neighbour of the suspect behind the attack in the French city of Nice has described him as a frightening man and "not normal".
The woman, called Hanan, spoke about living in the same building as forensic police carried out searches.
No failures - French PM Valls
No failures by security services over Nice attack, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls says.
BBC Proms opens with tribute to Nice attack victims
The first night of BBC Proms opened with a tribute to the 84 Nice attack victims.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra played France's National Anthem, La Marseillaise, at Royal Albert Hall.
Proms director David Pickard said the tribute was arranged early on Friday.
"Waking up to the tragic news this morning of the attacks in Nice I felt it was appropriate, as a mark of respect, that we open the 2016 Proms festival with a tribute to the victims," Proms director David Pickard told BBC News.
Read more here.
BreakingAttacker 'linked to Islamist circles'
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls says Nice attacker was one way or the other linked to radical Islamist circles.
French MP: 'We must not give up our freedom'
French ministers to meet
President Hollande has summoned his ministers to a cabinet meeting tomorrow, Saturday, at 10:00 (08:00 GMT)
Analysis: The use of vehicles for attacks
BBC 's security correspondent Frank Gardner
This is the fourth time in under two years that someone in France has driven a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians.
But the earlier attacks were on nothing like this scale.
The French authorities were quick to call this a terrorist attack, although there was no immediate claim by the chief suspect, the so-called Islamic State.
That organisation, based in Syria and Iraq, has been coming under increasing military pressure from US-led air strikes.
As far back as September 2014 its spokesman, Abu Muhammed al-Adnani, called for supporters to carry out attacks exactly like the one in Nice.
Professor John Gearson, who's an expert in National Security Studies at King's College, believes IS is currently favouring what he called spectacular attacks.
Using a vehicle as a weapon is a common form of attack in Iraq and Syria, where they are usually packed with explosives and driven into checkpoints or marketplaces.
In Israel, Palestinian militants have used bulldozers to attack pedestrians.
But in Europe this is a new and troubling development. In Britain, much has been learnt from measures taken against the Irish Republican Army. Those security precautions are now being hastily reviewed and updated.
'No justice'
The man attacked by Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel in January - and which led to the suspended jail sentence - has expressed his indignation on his Facebook page, French media report.
Jean-Baptiste Ximenes said Bouhlel should have been in jail, before asking: "Where is the justice here.This is a small world - so stop allowing them to walk free".
'We need better intelligence'
A former French Europe Minister, Pierre Lellouche, was part of a commission on inquiry into the Paris attacks last November.
He says France's response to the terror threat has been deeply flawed.
"We need much better intelligence, much better coordination of intelligence inside France, among Europeans, with our neighbours controlling our borders - particularly the Turks. This is not happening fast enough," he told the BBC.
Mr Lellouche calls the current state of emergency - now extended - a joke.
Putting thousands of troops on the streets may help to reassure a nervous public, he says, but the fact that a violent tactic from the Syrian civil war has now come to the streets of Nice, suggests that the Middle East and Europe are now part of what he calls the same strategic space.
Queen 'shocked' by Nice tragedy
The Queen and Prince Philip have sent their "most sincere condolences" to the families of those who died in the Nice lorry attack and to the French people, adding they were "deeply shocked and saddened".
'People knocked like skittles'
A British couple, Paul and Rebecca Gordon from the Midlands, are on holiday in Nice with their 18-month-old daughter.
They had walked along the promenade back to their hotel just moments before the attack took place.
Mr Gordon said: "Because we were on the fourth floor I could see pretty much the whole event unravelling and I just turned to my left and I just saw the whole road was covered in people and he just accelerated at a faster speed than he had approached the hotel and he hit everyone. I saw the truck bounce... and I saw people knocked like skittles."
Tributes around the globe
Analysis: Why France?
BBC correspondent Paul Adams
Why France? It's a question that's been asked repeatedly over the past 18 months. And there is no single answer.
France has a long history of jihadist violence, going back to an attack on the Paris metro by Algerian militants in 1995.
In recent years, almost 1,000 young French Muslims have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight for the so-called Islamic State - the largest single European contingent. Some have returned to commit acts of violence at home. Others have chosen a more lonely path, answering the calls of militant preachers and so-called Islamic State leaders to commit individual, random acts of violence on the streets of France.
That there appears to have been no shortage of willing recruits says something about France's inability to integrate huge numbers of immigrants from North Africa since the 1970s. Many have ended up living in deprived suburbs where crime and alienation flourish. For the more socially conservative, France's sometimes strident secularism has been another source of friction.
And when the violence comes, what of the response? Much has been said, in the past year, about the failure of governments to monitor and control the movement of terror suspects within Europe's passport-free Schengen area.
With each attack, in France or Belgium, come urgent calls to sort the situation out.
Flags at half mast at White House
President Barack Obama on Friday ordered flags at the White House and other US government buildings to be flown at half mast to honour victims of the attack in Nice.
Meanwhile, French news agency AFP is reporting that President Hollande has had telephone conversations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the UK's new Prime Minister Theresa May and President Obama.
Listen: France has a 'complicated' relationship with Islam
Radio 4 PM programme
Like many, former French Socialist MP Corinne Narassigin has been trying to answer why France has been targeted in recent attacks.
She said the country's history of colonisation had led to its "complicated" relationship with Islam.
But France was not the only country threatened by such attacks, she added.
Tributes and flowers flood Nice
BBC reporter
'Protection cannot be guaranteed'
Chairman of the UK's Intelligence and Security Committee Dominic Grieve has said that terrorist violence in Europe could "continue for some time" and that "100% protection cannot be guaranteed anywhere".
Speaking on the BBC News Channel, Mr Grieve said this was a "values battle" that would eventually be won, but until then "we have to accept that violence has come on to the continent and will be around for some time".
"All governments can do is strike collectively to tackle underlying causes and provide protection for citizens. Governments across Europe are doing that - but that doesn't mean that improvements can't be made," he said.
Mr Grieve said that conditions in the Middle East were fueling the violence across Europe, adding that we needed to build "cohesive communities" to stop attacks.
Picture of attacker
The attacker named as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel of Tunisian origin has been positively identified by a neighbour, the BBC understands.
This picture has been circulated by several news organisations, featuring Bouhlel.
It first surfaced online via news outlet, @News_Executive.
UK opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes to French ambassador
French prosecutor: 'Hallmarks of jihadist terrorism'
Francois Molins said no group had admitted carrying out the attack but that it bore the hallmarks of jihadist terrorism.
EU to hold terrorism talks on Monday
European Union foreign ministers will discuss the fight against terrorism at talks in Brussels on Monday, following a request from France.
Analysis by BBC's John Simpson
John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor, Paris
This country – whatever the outside world thinks about it – has been suffering a real identity crisis for several years now; and the series of deeply shocking extremist attacks, from the Bataclan night club last November to the murder of individual police officers in their own homes and now the massacre in Nice, has once more brought to the surface the atmosphere of insecurity and doubt which has been afflicting the French.
The habitual self-criticism which followed the Paris attacks is flaring up again.
The country’s security systems are under renewed scrutiny, and are being blamed for what has happened.
Just recently a report revealed that the various branches of national security weren’t speaking to one another enough about the extremist threat.
The rivalries which exist in every national bureaucracy are stronger in France than elsewhere.
This, combined with the political malaise which has dogged President Francois Hollande’s government – his approval rating down to 14%, according to reports – have persuaded many French people that their country simply isn’t as good at coping with this kind of emergency as other big countries are: the United States and Britain in particular.
There’s been a long, if subconscious, feeling here that France has been punching well above its weight in the world. The Nice attack is precisely the kind of thing which confirms that belief.
BreakingWhat do French authorities say about the attacker?
French prosecutor Francois Molins revealed the following:
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson: ' We are united'
"The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with France following this appalling and cowardly attack," said newly-appointed UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
"No country is immune to terrorism and we are united with our French and European partners as we deal with these threats to our countries and our way of life.
"British Embassy staff are on the ground in Nice and in close touch with French authorities."
UK's parliament building to be lit up in French colours
What the attacker did
French prosecutor Francois Molins has also confirmed other details:
BreakingFrench prosecutor confirms identity of attacker
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel has been confirmed as the driver of the lorry involved in the Nice attack by the french prosecutor Francois Molins.
French prosecutor updates victim numbers
France prosecutor Francois Molins has spoken to the press. He said: "We deplore the death of 84 people.
"202 were injured including 52 who are now in critical care - with 25 of those in intensive care.
"I would also like to pay tribute to all state services who were mobilised following this attack."
'I jumped into sea'
Eyewitness speaks to Andrew Plant, BBC Europe correspondent
Police search Nice address