NICE, France – The Latest on the truck attack in Nice on Bastille Day that killed 84 people: (all times local):
11:45 a.m.
France’s health minister says about 85 people remain hospitalized after a deadly truck rampage in the Mediterranean city of Nice, and 18 of them are in life-threatening condition — including one child.
Health Minister Marisol Touraine urged any survivors to seek counselling offered by the government after the Bastille Day attack Thursday night that killed 84 people.
Speaking to reporters in Nice on Sunday, Touraine said while scores of people who were hospitalized have been released, some may need further medical treatment as their injuries heal.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack by a local Nice truck driver who was killed by police.
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11:15 p.m.
French authorities have detained two more people in the investigation into the Bastille Day truck attack on the Mediterranean city of Nice that killed at least 84 people, as authorities try to determine whether the slain attacker was a committed religious extremist or just a very angry man.
A man and a woman were detained Sunday morning in Nice, according to an official with the Paris prosecutor’s office, which oversees national terrorism investigations. The official provided no details on their identities, and said five people detained previously remain in custody. Neighbors told The Associated Press that the attacker’s estranged wife was among them.
Investigators are hunting for possible accomplices to truck driver Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian who had lived in Nice for years. He was killed by police after ramming his truck through crowds on Nice’s famed seafront after a holiday fireworks display Thursday night.
The Islamic State statement said Bouhlel was following their calls to target citizens of countries fighting the extremists, but it’s unclear whether he had concrete links to the group.
10 a.m.
Nice’s famed Promenade des Anglais is gradually reopening and becoming a shrine to the dead, with memorials set up on the westbound lane of the road where victims were felled by an attacker with a truck. Some spots are still identifiable by bloodstains.
Joggers, bikers and sunbathers on Sunday cruised along the pedestrian walkway along the glistening Mediterranean Sea, where well-wishers placed flowers, French flags, stuffed animals and candles.
The site is also becoming a platform for anger at the attacker. Pained and outraged epitaphs are now written in blue maker on stones placed where police shot him dead.
Many families are angry that they couldn’t find information about missing loved ones, and many are angry at police for not preventing the deadly attack despite France being under a state of emergency imposed after Islamic State attacks last year in Paris.
