At least 84 people were killed and over 100 were injured after a truck ran into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice. The attack has led to extension of the state of emergency in France, which was supposed to end on 26 July.
After mowing down the seaside gathering, which was watching a fireworks display, the driver was shot by the police. The driver, who was carrying explosives in the truck, exchanged gunfire with the police.
While hundreds were either killed or injured by the truck, many managed to jump out of the truck’s way. Read the eyewitness accounts below.
“Nobody in the Way Stood a Chance”
“The red ambulance couldn’t search for the wounded among the dead. They were all dead there,” said an account of the aftermath of the attack, in The New York Times.
As the streets were laden with bodies, people had covered the corpses with tablecloths from the restaurants lining the Promenade, to “protect their dignity”.
Two sons of the Muslim woman, first killed in the attack, stood stunned by her body, which was covered in a “blue tartan blanket”.
It was simply a crowd of people, celebrating in the street, not a military base or a guarded building.
An eyewitness, Pierre Roux, whose apartment faces the sea, saw the truck spinning out of control. But he noticed that the headlights were off, and the driver wasn’t honking.
“Nobody in the way stood a chance,” he said.
“I Saw 12 Bodies, and It Was Clear There Would Be More”
A German journalist who witnessed the Nice attack said he saw a motorcyclist chase the killer truck and try to enter the cabin but fall and end up under the wheels.
I stood on the balcony, right on the Promenade des Anglais, and saw how people celebrated there, and how suddenly a truck drove through the crowd.Richard Gutjahr, journalist
He said the driver drove slowly. The motorcyclist attempted to overtake the truck, but fell and ended up under the wheels of the vehicle instead.
Gutjahr, a freelance journalist, said he also saw two police officers open fire on the truck.
In the next 15 to 20 seconds there were shots from several guns. I don’t know who shot at whom. Right afterwards I personally saw 12 dead bodies, and it was already clear there would be more.
“Truck of Death Went Past Me”
Damien Allemand, a journalist from a local news organisation in Nice was in the region when the vehicle, which he called the “white truck of death” passed meters away from him. In a blog post on Medium, Allemand described the incident as follows:
This truck of death was a few meters from me and I did not realise. I saw bodies flying like bowling pins in its path. Heard noises, screams that I will never forget.
This is a video of the incident shot by another witness:
“Dead Bodies Everywhere”
Another eye-witness account has described the “horrific” attack as “scary, awful”. A woman with the Twitter handle ‘Certified Tax Coach’ took to social media to write about the incident. After the truck of death had passed, “there were dead bodies everywhere”.
“It was Like a Stampede”
An Australian couple on vacation was also a part of the crowd that escaped from the death truck’s path. Speaking to an Australian publication named The Macleay Argus, Ash and Shannyn Hawker said:
We pushed our way through the crowd, which was massive– I’ve never seen or been in such a big crowd. We were about halfway back to our hotel when I heard people screaming and yelling and running towards us. It was like a stampede.
“Security Took Half an Hour”
A man who was working in the region said that a truck came from nowhere and “smashed into everyone” on the promenade, according to a video by The Guardian.
While still in shock of the incident, the man said that fire fighters and security took half an hour to reach the promenade.
“People Went Down Like Ninepins”
Jacques, who runs Le Queenie restaurant on the seafront, where the crowd had gathered, told France Info that the people gathered for Bastille Day “went down like ninepins”.
Another person who was in the vicinity when the death truck mowed people down, told Reuters:
I saw people go down. Then the truck stopped, we were just five metres away. A woman was there, she lost her son. Her son was on the ground, bleeding.Franck Sidoli
Another eyewitness posted a video of the destruction left in the trail of the death truck.
(With inputs from Medium/Damien Allemand, The Macleay Argus, The Guardian, and Reuters)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)