The Chilling Words Uttered By Nice Killer Before Attack.

On 11th July, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel rented a 19-tonne refrigerated truck, paying the required deposit.

He failed to return the vehicle, using it instead as a weapon in carrying out one of the deadliest terrorist atrocities ever seen in Europe, killing 84 people, including ten children, and injuring 202 others, 52 of them critically.

The 31-year-old former delivery driver and chauffeur, the father of three children, has been described by neighbours as being a drinker. One local resident even said that he overhead an argument between Lahouaiej Bouhlel and another person where Lahouaiej Bouhlel - having been called "worthless" - uttered the chilling words "One day, you’ll hear about me".

The attack bore all the hallmarks of jhadist terror said French officials. Isis have previously issued instructions to use all means possible to conduct jihad, with the use of vehicles mentioned as one of the options. The devastating toll came from him mowing through Promenade de Anglais in Nice packed with 30,000 people celebrating Bastille Day - he travelled for just over a mile, and also fired on police using an automatic pistol.

However, unlike those that havoc wreaked by Islamists in France and Belgium in the past two years, there was no direct Syrian connection to this massacre. Instead, Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s introduction to a cult of death may have come in Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

His family came from the town of M’saken, near Sousse, the resort where 38 tourists, 30 of them Britons, were gunned down by Seifeddine Rezgui, a student, on the beach last June. The killings had been preceded by an attack at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, resulting in 22 deaths, which also had links to the Sousse area. Lahouaiej Bouhlel had, it appears, visited the Sousse on a number of occasions, the last time around eight months ago.

President François Hollande, arriving in Nice, declared: “We are facing a long battle because we have an enemy who will continue to hate all the people who enjoy liberty. The whole of France is facing the threat of Islamist terrorism.”



the independent news.