The promenade in Nice where a truck driver drove into crowds watching the Bastille Day fireworks display, killing 84 and injuring 200, has reopened as France continues to bolster its defences against terrorism across the country.
On Sunday, two more people were arrested in connection with the attack carried out by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, according to judicial sources. With France still reeling from the attacks and questions being asked about the government’s ability to protect its citizens, the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, appealed for young volunteers to join security service reserves.
“I want to call on all French patriots who wish to do so to join this operational reserve,” he said. The reserve force is currently made up of 12,000 volunteers aged between 17 and 30.
Police officers kept watch on Saturday night as tourists returned to the scene of the atrocity, walking past flowers, cards and messages of solidarity left on the Promenade des Anglais in tribute to the victims.
The man and woman arrested on Sunday take the total number of people in custody in connection with the Nice attack to seven, including Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s wife. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian immigrant with no apparent links to extremism, was shot dead by police during the attack. Cazeneuve said the father of three “seemed to have been radicalised very quickly, from what his friends and family” had told police.
The interior minister’s plea for volunteers came after opposition politicians and newspapers demanded more than “the same old solemn declarations”, and the far-right Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, called on Cazeneuve to step down.
“In any other country in the world, a minister with a toll as horrendous as Bernard Cazeneuve – 250 dead in 18 months – would have quit,” she said.
Thursday’s attack in the French Riviera city follows the assault on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery in Paris in January last year and the coordinated attacks on Paris last November. A French parliamentary inquiry last week criticised numerous failings by the intelligence services over the Paris massacres.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Nice killings on Saturday.
In a statement via its Amaq news service, Isis said one of its “soldiers” carried out the attack “in response to calls to target nations of coalition states that are fighting [Isis]”.
After crisis talks in Paris, the French defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, noted that Isis had recently repeated calls for supporters to “directly attack the French, Americans, wherever they are and by whatever means”.
“Even when Daesh [Isis] is not the organiser, Daesh breathes life into the terrorist spirit that we are fighting,” he said.
Isis also claimed responsibility for the attacks in France in January last year and November.
At least 10 children and adolescents were among the dead in Nice as well as tourists from the US, Russia, Ukraine, Switzerland and Germany.
A spokeswoman for the city’s paediatric hospital said 16 bodies had not yet been identified.
The first compensation payouts to victims under a French government scheme will begin next week, minister Juliette Méadel told AFP on Saturday.
Five children and 21 adults remained in a critical condition and were among 121 people still in hospital, the French health ministry said.
