In a statement on Saturday, the news agency Amaq, which supports Isis, said: “The person who carried out the operation in Nice, France, to run down people was one of the soldiers of ISIS. He carried out the operation in response to calls to target nationals of states that are part of the coalition fighting ISIS.”
Mohamed-Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old French-Tunisian man who lived in the Riviera city, drove a heavy-goods vehicle through a crowd that had gathered to watch the display on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.
Later on Saturday, the Isis-operated radio station Bayan claimed that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was a soldier who had completed a “new, special operation using a truck”. It also warned western nations that no security measures would spare them “from the blows of the ISIS terrorists”.
The claim of responsibility, which came 36 hours after the attack, will increase pressure on French authorities investigating the massacre. No evidence was presented to support the claim that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had been acting in Isis’s name; Guardian reported.
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