France began a period of national mourning for the 84 people killed when a Tunisian man rammed a truck into a crowd, as investigators tried to establish Saturday if he was motivated by radical Islam.
Meanwhile, a private funeral was held Friday in northern England for Jo Cox, the MP whose murder halted Britain’s EU referendum campaign and sparked an outpouring of sympathy from around the world.
Cox, 41, was shot and stabbed in the street in her Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Spen on June 16, exactly a week before the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, in which she campaigned for Britain to stay in the bloc.
The IS has claimed responsibility for the Nice attack in which Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a mass of people celebrating France’s Bastille Day in the Riviera city of Nice.
Some 30,000 people had thronged the Promenade Des Anglais to watch a fireworks display with their friends and families on a night which turned to horror as the rampaging truck left mangled bodies strewn across the palm-fringed road.
President Francois Hollande said the country would observe three days of mourning as he warned the death toll could rise further, with more than 50 people still fighting for their lives.
The massacre, which comes after two major terror attacks in France in 2015, has once again shaken the country to its core, raising questions over intelligence and security failings and how to stop such unsophisticated, yet deadly, assaults.
Hollande was due to meet his security chiefs on Saturday and the country would observe a minute of silence at midday.
Investigators were piecing together a profile of the driver, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a man with a record of petty crime, but no known connection to terrorist groups.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the attacker probably had links to radical Islam, but Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cautioned it was too early to make the connection.
Anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said the 31-year-old Tunisian was “completely unknown” to the intelligence services but that the assault was “exactly in line with” calls from jihadist groups to kill.
For several years, extremist groups such as Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have exhorted followers to strike “infidels” — singling out France on several occasions — using whatever means they have at hand.
In September 2014, IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, suggested supporters “run (infidels) over with your car.”
The United Kingdom suspended the Brexit campaign for three days in honor of Cox.