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Associated Press

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man behind last week’s truck attack in Nice in which 84 people were killed, sent a text message before the attack demanding “more weapons”, French media reported Sunday, citing investigators.
The text message, investigators said, was sent to one of the four men arrested in connection with the attack on Saturday.
Bouhlel on Thursday drove a delivery truck through crowds of people along Nice’s main promenade as a fireworks display to celebrate Bastille Day was ending. He used a pistol to shoot into the crowd before he was killed by police.
In addition to the four arrests on Saturday, a man and a woman were arrested Sunday, the French Justice Ministry said. 
The two are suspected of helping Bouhlel obtain the pistol, according to a French security official not authorised to be publicly named speaking about an ongoing investigation.
French weekly Journal du Dimanche cited investigators as saying Bouhlel emptied his bank account, sold his car and told friends about his radicalisation before the attack.
Islamic State claims responsibility for truck attack in Nice as pressure mounts on government over security failings
More than 200 people were also wounded in the carnage wrought by Bouhlel on the seafront of this southern Mediterranean city.
About 85 people remained hospitalised Sunday. Of those, 18, including a child, were still in life-threatening condition, Health Minister Marisol Touraine told reporters on a visit to the city.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said only 35 bodies have been definitively identified so far. Touraine also said one of the people hospitalized still has not been identified.
Bouhlel’s estranged wife, who was arrested Friday, has meanwhile been released from custody, according to an official in the Paris prosecutor’s office. She is the mother of Bouhlel’s three children and was in the process of divorcing him.
The woman’s lawyer, Jean-Yves Garino, told BFM-TV that Bouhlel physically abused her and the rest of the family, and she eventually threw him out of the house.
“It was hard, but she did it,” Garino said, adding, “she was no longer in contact with him.”
In total, six people now remain in custody related to the truck attack, but officials have provided no details about their identities.
Bouhlel sent one of those people text messages just before the attack, the French security official said. The official would not comment on the content of the text messages or confirm the reports that they included a request for “more weapons”.
Father of Nice attacker insists ‘he had no links to religion’ but had previously suffered mental problems
Investigators are hunting for possible accomplices of Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian who had lived in Nice for years. He was killed by police after ramming his truck through crowds after a holiday fireworks display Thursday night.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it’s unclear whether Bouhlel had concrete links to the group. IS said he was following their call to target citizens of countries fighting the extremists.
The security official said Bouhlel sold his car just before the attack, which appeared premeditated.
All seven people taken in for questioning said Bouhlel was violent and unstable. While they all said he had long been indifferent to religion, some described a recent and very rapid conversion to radical Islam, the official said.
Neighbors also described the attacker as volatile, prone to drinking and womanizing. His father, in Tunisia, said his son did not pray or fast for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
But French authorities believe that something may have changed. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper that authorities “now know that the killer radicalised very quickly.”
The Islamic State group “is encouraging individuals unknown to our services to stage attacks ... that is without a doubt the case in the Nice attack,” he said Sunday.
Nice’s famous Promenade des Anglais, the site of the slaughter, has reopened. Memorials for the dead have been set up on the westbound lane of the road where the victims were mowed down by Bouhlel.
Additional reporting by Tribune News Service


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French policewoman claims ministry pressured her to change  Nice attack report

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Terror charges for five ‘accomplices’ of Nice truck attacker, who plotted atrocity for months: prosecutor

Bastille Day attack

Bastille Day attacker sent text asking for ‘more weapons’, French reports say, as another two suspects are detained

People gather at a makeshift memorial of flowers and candles on the 'Promenade des Anglais', scene of the Bastille Day truck attack tat killed 84 people. Photo: EPA

Authorities investigate the truck that ploughed through Bastille Day revelers in the French resort city of Nice on July 14. Photo: AP

This photo made available by Kapitalis shows Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. French authorities detained two more people Sunday in the investigation into the Bastille Day truck attack on the Mediterranean city of Nice that killed at least 84 people, as authorities try to determine whether the slain attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was a committed religious extremist or just a very angry man. (Kapitalis via AP)

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