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Terrorist kill 80, France truck attack Bastille Day: French president denounces 'monstrous' killing of 80 people – live updates

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I've never seen panic like it before'

Witness John Curtis has emailed from Nice to describe the chaos that unfolded when the attack took place.
We’re renting an apartment in Nice in rue Andrioli, about 2 or 3 hundred metres west of the [hotel] Negresco. We watched the fireworks sitting on a wall overlooking the beach.
There were thousands of people including lots of families with young children. When the fireworks were over we walked back along the the Promenade des Anglais. There were no cars and the wide dual-carriageway was completely taken over by pedestrians.
We crossed over to the landward side and had just reached the point where there was traffic again. On our side of the road, where the traffic was heading out of town, there was nose to tail traffic but the other side of the central reservation was traffic-free.
Suddenly on the other side of the road we could see a white truck driving very fast and swerving from side to side. I knew immediately that it was going to kill people and it was heading straight into the crowds. People started running towards the side streets.
I’ve never seen panic like it before. We were swept along by the crowd and we managed to get back to our apartment.”
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Children undergoing surgery

Laurence Marie from the Lenval paediatric hospital has told Reuters news agency that “many” children were undergoing serious operations there.
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As dawn breaks on the Promenade des Anglais, many relatives of the missing are still searching for their loved ones.
A woman cries asking for her son as she walk near the scene of the attack in the French resort city of Nice, southern France
 A woman cries asking for her son as she walk near the scene of the attack in the French resort city of Nice, southern France. Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP
A security guard walks near the scene of the attack
 A security guard walks near the scene of the attack. Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP
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What we know so far

  • A large truck has ploughed into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in the southern French city of Nice at about 11pm local time.
  • The crash, which left at least 80 people dead, including several children and 18 seriously injured, is being treated as a terrorist attack. 
  • The driver of the truck was shot dead by police. They are trying to determine if he had accomplices.
  • Authorities said the man had been firing on the crowd and police as he drove, and that the truck was loaded with weapons and grenades. Unverified reports said the rifles were fake and the grenade was ‘inactive’.
  • Witnesses said the driver was “zigzagging” so he could hit as many people as possible. It was reported that he drove into the crowd for 2km at a speed of about 50km/h.
  • Some told of parents frantically throwing their children over fences to avoid them being struck by the lorry as a “stampede” of people rushed down the Promenade des Anglais.
  • Unconfirmed reports in French media said an ID card belonging to a 31-year-old resident of Nice who had dual French-Tunisian nationality had been found in the truck.
  • Reports said the driver was known to police, but not for terrorist-related activity.
  • No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
  • François Hollande, the French president, described the attack as a “monstrosity” and said soldiers would be deployed to support gendarmes and police, particularly at the country’s borders. He said the attack was “terrorist in nature” and vowed France would always be stronger than the fanatics that want to attack her.
  • The country’s state of emergency, which was due to expire on 26 July, is to be extended for three months.
  • The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said: “We are at war with terrorists who want to strike us at any cost and who are extremely violent.”
  • The prime minister, Manuel Valls, said the country was in “immense pain”.
  • Hollande is on his way to Paris from Avignon to chair an emergency security and defence meeting at 9am on Friday. He will then head to Nice with Valls. Cazeneuve is in Nice.
  • World leaders including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have condemned the attack. Donald Trump has postponed the announcement of his running mate.
  • Nice hospitals have launched an appeal for blood donations in the wake of the attack.
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'Inactive grenade and fake rifles' found in truck

The truck driver who rammed his vehicle into a massive crowd in Nice fired a pistol several times before being shot dead by police, a local official has told Agence France-Presse.
“At the moment that he was shot dead by police, he had fired several times,” said president of the region Christian Estrosi.
A source close to the investigation said an “inactive” grenade was found inside the 19-tonne truck, as well as “several fake rifles”.
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Driver known to police – reports

The Guardian is not able to confirm the report at this stage.
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Parents were throwing their children to safety

Witnesses have told of how parents threw their children over fences to safety as a “stampede” of people rushed down the Promenade des Anglais.
Ismali Khalidi, a US-Palestinian writer who was in the southern French city to visit his sister, told the Guardian: “I have never seen that level of chaos and hysteria and terror.”
Read more here:
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The French illustrator @Louison_A has shared this image on Twitter.
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Google plusBritain’s new foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has joined the politicians condemning the attack.
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A 'global failure' of French intelligence

After November’s Paris attacks, the French government put in place a state of emergency, which restricts civil liberties. It allows police to conduct searches without a warrant and place people under house arrest outside the normal legal process.
A French parliamentary investigation into last year’s terrorist attacks on Paris has identified multiple failings by France’s intelligence agencies.
The parliamentary commission was set up to assess the failure to prevent a series of attacks that killed a total of 147 people in 2015 – from January’s gun attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and a kosher grocery store to the coordinated gun and bomb attacks on 13 November outside the national sports stadium, at bars and restaurants and at a rock gig at the Bataclan concert hall.
The commission highlighted a “global failure” of French intelligence and recommended a total overhaul of the intelligence services and the creation of a single, US-style national counter-terrorism agency.

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