The Islamic State has made the first claim of responsibility for the attack on Nice that took 84 lives.
From the Associated Press:
The claim—circulated on social media by a news outlet affiliated with the group—didn’t name Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the 31-year-old Tunisian who authorities say was behind the wheel as a truck crashed into revelers Thursday night. But the statement quoting an IS security member said the man was following calls from the group to target citizens of countries fighting it.
The veracity of the group’s claim couldn’t immediately be determined, but French officials didn’t dispute it.
Lahouaiej Bouhlel himself seems to have left no written motivation or statement of affiliation with ISIS. Authorities had not previously identified him as a possible security threat. Rather, he had a record of petty crime and was known by neighbors not as being particularly religious (none could remember him visiting the nearby mosque), but as angry, aloof, and troubled.
It is as yet unclear if Lahouaiej Bouhlel acted alone. French authorities and officials are not without concern about what is to come. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said that while France “will win this war…we might be faced with new retaliations…there will probably be more innocent victims.”
