A terrorist who used a hired lorry to kill at least 84 people in a rampage during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice has been named as a convicted criminal well known to the police for armed attacks.
Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel - described as a "weird loner" who "became depressed" when his wife left him - was a French passport holder who lived in the Riviera city and was regularly in trouble with the law.
ISIL claimed responsibility Saturday for the attack. An Islamic State-run media outlet says the man who drove his truck into a crowd in the French coastal city of Nice is a "soldier" of the group.
The Aamaq news agency on Saturday cited a "security source" as saying the attacker "carried out the operation in response to calls to target the citizens of coalition countries fighting the Islamic State."
French authorities said they were checking the claim.
The perpetrator of the Nice massacre, described by Isil as a “soldier of Islam”, was prone to uncontrollable fits of rage and took a knife to his daughter’s teddy-bear, his former neighbours said.
“We often used to hear him shouting and throwing things around,” a neighbour told the Telegraph. “When he split up with his wife, he defecated everywhere in the flat, shredded his daughter’s teddy-bear with a knife and slashed the mattresses.”
Other neighbours said he also had periods of silence when he appeared to retreat into himself. “We never saw him bringing friends home. Sometimes he seemed depressed and hardly spoke,” one said.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old delivery driver, had a police record for violence, theft and threatening behaviour over the past six years.
He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence in March after hitting a driver with a baseball bat in a road rage attack.
He was not placed on probation or kept under supervision after the incident, judicial sources said.
“His wife left him because he kept hitting her,” said Hamid, a local man who was acquainted with the killer. “He wasn’t an observant Muslim. He ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and didn’t fast during Ramadan. When I hear them saying he did this for Islam it makes me shudder. So many innocents died. It is someone’s idea of a sick joke to call that guy an ‘Islamist’. To me, he wasn’t even a Muslim, more of psychopath.”
Bouhlel was reportedly not on a terrorist watch list and investigators are seeking to establish his motives - and are also looking for possible accomplices.
French President Francois Hollande met with his defence and security chiefs and cabinet ministers Saturday morning At least 10 children are among the dead following the "cowardly and barbaric" atrocity that left several British national among the many injured.
Officials feared the death toll will rise, as dramatic footage emerged of the mass killer being shot dead by police in the cab of his truck after unleashing carnage on the 30,000-strong crowd.
Police were forced to move on street sellers at one of the Nice attack memorials, as residents tried to cash in on the large crowds.
One man selling bags of what appeared to be nuts for two euros was spotted walking through the grieving crowd in a bid to drum up business.Officers approached him after he walked up to a group carrying flowers. French Police told the Telegraph anyone trying to sell goods in the area was "rude".
Other tourists were spotted taking selfies next to the flowers.
One couple posed for a photograph in front of the beach, which was still littered from debris from Thursday night's attack.
Meanwhile, two men sat on the fence next to the pile of flowers and made "peace signs" for a shot.
The Promenade des Anglais, the seafront road where the lorry driver killed 84 people just over 24 hours before, reopened to the public on Friday night.
The road, lined with palm trees, was busy on Saturday morning as tourists enjoyed a quiet coffee overlooking the sea. Other residents picked up bread from shops, which until now had been closed due to the attacks.
Dozens of armed police were also on guard while some of the worst-hit areas where the tragedy unfolded remained cordoned off.
Two memorials were set up along the promenade, with hundreds of bouquets of flowers left in memory of the victims.Candles, cuddly toys and handwritten notes interspersed the flowers. One was addressed to "all the little angels" and wished them a "good time together".
Around 50 metres up the road, a large crowd gathered around the second memorial.
One couple clutched each other as they sobbed. Children also lit candles, while drawings were placed amongst the flowers.
A sign on the tree thanked the French police for their bravery and courage.
16 bodies "remain unidentified" after the attack in Nice that left 84 named dead on Thursday night. Stéphanie Simpson, the spokesperson for the Lenval Foundation, a children's hospital in Nice which treated 30 children on Thursday night said that "five children are still in a critical condition, one child is stable and three are breathing via artificial respiration" . A foreign eight-year-old child who is in hospital is being identified, according to the Figaro.