Several Muslims are thought to be among the victims of a lorry attack in Nice that has left at least 84 dead and at least 100 injured.
The lorry ploughed through a crowd of people watching fireworks to celebrate French national holiday Bastille Day in the city on the French Riviera.
No clear motive has yet emerged why the driver, who was known to police for petty crimes, carried out the attack, but the incident is being treated as a terrorist incident.
Iranian journalist Maryam Violet told the Guardian: “There were so many Muslim people who were victims because I could see they had scarves over their head and some were speaking Arabic. One family lost a mother and in Arabic they were saying she’s a martyr.”
She added: “People were shouting, ‘It’s a terrorist attack, it’s a terrorist attack,’ it was clear that the driver was doing it deliberately.”
The French Muslim Council has condemned the atrocity as a “barbarian attack”. In a statement the council said: “France has been hit yet another time by a terrorist attack of the utmost severity.” It added the “odious terrorist act took aim at our country on the very day of its national holiday, a day which celebrates liberty, equality and fraternity”.
The council called for French Muslims to pray on Friday for “the memory of the victims of this barbarian attack”.
The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, called for volunteers from across France’s religious communities to help in the wake of the attacks.
“We will work with the imams, priests and rabbis who will also join us to help the victims and families who are suffering and will probably never heal their wounds ... I want to thank people who welcomed passersby and those people who show us tonight that hopefully, solidarity still exists in a world that is too egoistical and individualistic.”
The attacks on Bastille Day are yet to be claimed by any extremist militant groups, but Isis has reportedly told supports to “await” confirmation it was behind the massacre, through an announcement by its press agency Amaq.
France has an estimated Muslim population of at least five million – the largest in Western Europe, and there were several Muslim victims among the Paris terror attacks last November.
