Five arrested with connections to Islamic State and the terrorist attack in Nice, France

Five people have been in arrested in France in connection with a lorry attack that killed at least 84 people in the city of Nice, as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the carnage on the country’s main national holiday.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Saturday that police had arrested five people believed to be linked to Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man suspected of ramming a lorry on Thursday night through a large crowd celebrating Bastille Day. Bouhele was shot dead by police.

One of the men being held was arrested on Friday and four others on Saturday morning, a judicial source told AFP news agency. The estranged wife of the Bouhlel is also still being held by authorities.

The arrests came as ISIL, also known as ISIS, claimed responsibility for the attack.

“The person who carried out the operation in Nice, France, to run down people was one of the soldiers of Islamic State,” Amaq, an ISIL-linked website, said on Saturday 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, using a different name for ISIL.

Read More- Al Jazeera

Image courtesy of Reuters