Police arrest three in Nice as IS claims truck attack

TIL Desk/World/Nice(France)-Islamic State claimed responsibility for the truck attack on the French city of Nice on Saturday as French police arrested three people there in connection with the carnage that claimed the lives of at least 84 people. “The person who carried out the operation in Nice, France, to run down people was one of the soldiers of Islamic State,” the news agency, which supports Islamic State, said via its Telegram account.

“He carried out the operation in response to calls to target nationals of states that are part of the coalition fighting Islamic State,” the statement said. French authorities said they were checking the claim. The 31-year old Tunisian driver of the truck drove at a Bastille day crowd on the waterfront of the French riveria city on Thursday night.

Authorities had been working to find out whether his motives were indeed connected to radical Islam. He was not known to French intelligence sources for radicalisation. The arrests, which came on top of two on Friday including the attacker’s wife, concerned the attacker’s “close entourage”, the sources said. They were made in two different areas of Nice.