A Harrowing Photo that Describes the Tragedy of Nice Truck Attack

The harrowing juxtaposition of a corpse and an inanimate doll is heart-rending.

A photo from the site of the Nice truck attack. (Photo: Reuters)

The Nice truck attack on Friday is the latest in a tragic string of attacks that have shaken the world in the past two months. And every time there is news of an attack, the photos that accompany them, are probably the most heartbreaking.

The photo of a dead body lying next to a child’s doll from Thursday’s attack is one such heart wrenching example.

A photo from the site of the Nice truck attack. (Photo: Reuters)

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Taken by Reuters’ Eric Gaillard, the photograph of a dead body next to a doll goes straight to the heart. The size of the body and the doll suggests that this particular victim is a child.

At least 80 people have been killed and 100 injured in the southern French town of Nice when a truck rammed into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday on Thursday night. The driver, who drove along the famed Promenade des Anglais seafront before hitting spectators, was shot dead.

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“People Went Down Like Ninepins”

Eye witness accounts from the attack site are heart rending.

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:

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Police cordon off the area where the truck rammed into the celebrating crowd. (Photo: AP)

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

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 it. I saw bodies flying like bowling pins in its path. Heard noises, screams that I will never forget.

(With inputs from Medium/Damien Allemand, The Macleay Argus, The Guardian, and Reuters)