By REBECCA HERSHER • 3 HOURS AGO
Originally published on July 14, 2016 4:20 pm
Updated 8:20 p.m. ET
A truck drove into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing dozens of people on Thursday evening. Local media report the number of dead could be as high as 70, with 100 people injured.
NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reported the truck started about a mile away and plowed into a crowd of people watching fireworks on the French national holiday, and that the identity of the driver is still unknown. French President Francois Hollande went to the interior ministry's crisis center after hearing of the attack and the French anti-terror prosecutor in Paris has opened a terror case looking into the Nice attack.
Beardsley reported:
"The driver was shot. There may have a second person in the truck, we don't know yet."Witnesses describe hundreds of people running in every direction, pounding on doors, asking to be let in. Another witness [reports] layers of bodies piled on each other and people taking tablecloths from restaurants to lay over them.
The Associated Press quoted an eyewitness, Wassim Bouhlel, as saying there were "bodies everywhere" after the crash. He told the wire service that after the truck entered the crowd, he saw the driver emerge from the vehicle with a gun, shooting at people.
The wire service reported that a journalist for the local newspaper Nice Matin, Damien Allemand, was at the scene, where fireworks had just finished when the truck rammed through the crowd as people were beginning to leave.
"An enormous white truck came along at a crazy speed, turning the wheel to mow down the maximum number of people," he wrote online according to the AP. "I saw bodies flying like bowling pins along its route. Heard noises, cries I will never forget."
Reuters quoted local television station BFM TV as saying the local government in Nice was asking people to stay home following the incident.
The head of the regional government, former Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, told BFM TV the truck had guns and grenades inside, according to the wire service, and posted a tweet calling on the people of Nice to stand together in solidarity.
Multiple live videos streaming online from Nice shortly after 10:30 p.m. local time show people running in panic down the city's streets.
President Obama has issued a statement, condemning "what appears to be a horrific terrorist attack in Nice, France, which killed and wounded dozens of innocent civilians."
This is a breaking news story. We will update this post as details are confirmed.
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