Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
FRENCH INVESTIGATORS ARRESTED two more people today as they pieced together details about the motives and preparations of the Tunisian who rammed a truck into a crowd in an IS-claimed attack that killed 84.
Five other people are already in custody, including the estranged wife of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian with no apparent links to extremism who is said to have been radicalised very quickly.
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel visited the Nice promenade with his rented truck on the two days before he smashed the vehicle into a crowd of people watching Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city on Thursday night, according to a source close to the probe.
Mangled bodies were left strewn across the storied seafront, including children, in the grisly attack by a man described by those who knew him as a loner with tendencies towards violence and depression.
‘Radicalised very quickly’
While he had a record of being a petty criminal, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had never appeared on the radar of intelligence services for links to radical Islam.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday the father-of-three “seemed to have been radicalised very quickly, from what his friends and family” have told police.
Several people have told police that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel (31) had shown signs of being religious, despite previous reports from those who knew him that he smoked, drank and never went to the mosque, said a source close to the investigation.
People who went to the same gym as Lahouaiej-Bouhlel – where he did salsa dancing and lifted weights – described him as “conceited” and someone who “would flirt with anything that moved”.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the killings, saying that one of its “soldiers” carried out the attack “in response to calls to target nations of coalition states that are fighting (IS)”.
Cazeneuve described the massacre as a “a new kind of attack” which highlighted “the extreme difficulty of the anti-terrorism fight”.
“We are now confronted with individuals open to IS’s message to engage in extremely violent actions without necessarily having been trained or having the weapons to carry out a mass (casualty) attack,” he said.
Prime target
France is a prime target of IS, for its role in fighting the group in Iraq and Syria, its cherished secular values, and what the government has admitted is a “social and ethnic apartheid” that alienates its large Muslim community.
Hundreds of French jihadists have gone to fight alongside IS in Iraq and Syria.
Those inspired by IS from afar with no links to jihadist networks create a massive headache for intelligence services.
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian noted that IS had recently repeated calls for supporters to “directly attack the French, Americans, wherever they are and by whatever means”.
“Even when Daesh is not the organiser, Daesh breathes life into the terrorist spirit that we are fighting,” he said, using an Arabic name for IS.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
It’s amazing to think the amount of species lost at the end of the last ice age. Some amazing animals we just missed out on by a heartbeat of seeing. Megatherium, a sloth the size of an elephant… Mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, etc.
This whole story is BS – we all know the earth is only 5000 years old.
4.6 billion*
says who?
The reason being that the planet was hit with multiple comets 1200 years apart 12000 years ago….wiped out a lot more than animals.
@ Anto Mahon
Believe it or not, it was actually an Irishman who claimed the world was less than 5000 years old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology
Lucky they were we probably would of just eat them or wore them.
@Talleyrand Frye good stuff pity he forgot to read Genesis 1:1 as this scripture shows that the earth could be billions of years old.
Its amazing to think in the last 40 years we have lost 50% of our worldwide wildlife http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/1409030-animals-wildlife-wwf-decline-science-world/
I heard Irish water cut them off for not paying
I think they had paid
Died of thirst waiting on the bar man in coppers
“All along these Mammoths where contributing to their own demise”. I wonder could man learn anything from that sentence
I could die of thirst with the price of beer
Again, this is a story abound a foreign country!
There never was – or never will be – any woolly mammoths in this catholic and holy country.
You will have to wait until SF/IRA get into power before we can expect total isolation from the outside world like N Korea.
Yes Leo – but, in the meantime, we have a language (Irish) that nobody else speaks and sports (GAA) that no-one else plays – so it’s a good start…
We also have our fair share of morons
Do you have to bring SF/IRA into a discussion about mammoths?
Leo is just butt hurt because he got his ass handed to him on another article about his bigotry, chap just isn`t very good at this posting lark, and tends to go from article to article spouting his crap
I think someone slagged off his Bowler hat that he was wearing a few weeks ago and he can`t seem to be able to keep it together since.
And SF/IRA never engaged in bigotry, bus?
You are Just like your mate Leo ,Dotrice
This article is about Mammoths, only the likes of you two could possibly drag bigotry, SF/IRA into it – Newsflash, you aren`t funny or controversial, or engaging
To put it simply, so your tiny little mind can understand,
You are just boring, repetitive and ridiculous.
I`d hazard a guess, that you are both the same person
Pathetic at best is how i would describe you
You brought up bigotry. Sad that insult is your only defense…☺
Last word
tool?
Not sure why we should feel sorry for them though seeing as they caused the ice-age in the first place.
Edna is a woolly mammoth!
have your say