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Updated 7/15 9:30 am PT.
Last night in the southern French city of Nice, a truck drove into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day, France’s national holiday, killing at least 84 and injuring over 200 more. The attack was deliberate and coordinated, and has inspired mourning across the globe.
The Washington Times reports that several French outlets have reported that “ID papers in the truck showed the driver to be a 31-year-old Nice resident with dual French and Tunisian citizenship.” The city’s daily paper, the Nice Matin, identified the driver as a man named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
An earlier version of this story reported that a second gunman may have been involved, but it appears that this was not the case.
Confusion erupted when the story was first reported, as some writers and commenters were unsure whether the truck drove into the crowd accidentally or deliberately. Shortly after the truck first drove into the crowd, a gunfight broke out between police and the attacker.
Twitter has dedicated a page to covering the incident, which many are using to share images and video from the attack. Visit this page at your own risk; the content is graphic and highly disturbing.
Yesterday’s violence is the second major terror attack in France in the past year.
We will be reporting on the international community’s response to this horrific attack in another post.
