WORLD
Nice attack: France declares three days of mourning
Baku, July 15, AZERTAC
France has declared three days of national mourning after at least 84 people were killed in the city of Nice when an attacker drove a lorry into a large crowd celebrating the country's main national holiday, according to Aljazeera.
The driver, who police told news agencies was a 31-year-old Nice resident, was shot dead on Thursday night after ramming the lorry through the festive crowd for two kilometres, sending hundreds of people fleeing in terror and leaving the area strewn with bodies, including many children.
French President Francois Hollande arrived in the city on Friday morning and visited victims at a hospital.
Speaking after an emergency meeting on Friday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the period of national mourning would begin on Saturday.
Valls also confirmed that a measure extending the country's state of emergency, which has been in force since the November 13 Paris attacks, would go before parliament next week.
"Times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism, and we must face this together," he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for what was the third major attack to hit France in the past 18 months.
Hollande said the incident had "all the elements to be called a terrorist attack" and vowed to fight similar threats.
"Nothing will make us yield in our will to fight terrorism," he said in the early hours of Friday.