French President Francois Hollande announced new help on Friday for Iraq’s military in fighting Islamic State extremists, trying to show his government is taking action amid criticism that there weren’t enough police protecting Nice’s Bastille Day celebration when a truck attack last week killed 84 people.
Stressing the international nature of the fight against IS, Mr. Hollande said, “Even if France that was attacked July 14, it’s the world that was targeted.”
The Paris prosecutor says attacker Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had accomplices and appears to have been plotting his attack for months, citing text messages, more than 1,000 phone calls and video of the attack scene on the phone of one of five suspects handed preliminary terrorism charges on Thursday in the case. Bouhlel was killed by police.
Amid questions about the police presence July 14, authorities in Nice are protesting against a request from French anti-terror police to delete surveillance camera images of the attack. The cameras could show where and how police were deployed.
The city received a letter this week from the SDAT anti-terrorism agency, obtained by The Associated Press, saying images of the July 14 attack should be destroyed.
An official with the national police said the request was motivated by concern that the images could leak and be used for jihadi propaganda. The official was not authorised to be publicly named.
A lawyer for the city submitted a protest letter on Friday saying Nice officials would not comply for legal, administrative and technical reasons. But the lawyer also notes that the images are scheduled to be automatically deleted anyway on Sunday, according to Nice City Hall practice of deleting CCTV images after 10 days. Investigators will keep copies of the images.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve acknowledged on Thursday that only lightly armed local police were guarding the entrance to a pedestrian zone on the Nice beachfront when Bouhlel sped past a barricade and ran over people. Mr. Cazeneuve had previously said national police were guarding the closed-off boulevard.
Nice City Hall has put up the names of all 84 people killed in the attack on two black banners. The victims were of 18 nationalities, Mr. Hollande said. More than 300 people were wounded, and Mr. Hollande said on Friday that 12 are “fighting for their lives.”
