FRANCE UNDER ATTACK ONE MORE TIME... PLEASE OH GOD. THE WORLD MUST UNITE TO STOP THIS HORROR. #STOPT

"President Putin sent a telegram to his French counterpart President Hollande, in which he expressed deep condolences after this inhumane, barbaric terrorist attack," Peskov told reporters.

Russia is ready for close cooperation with France on all anti-terrorism issues, Putin said in a message to French President Francois Hollande after deadly truck attack in Nice.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his condolences to French President Francois Hollande after Thursday's attack in the French city of Nice, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

Late on Thursday evening, a heavy truck hit a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day in Nice, killing 84 and injuring dozens more.

A man walks through debris scatterd on the street the day after a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores celebrating the Bastille Day July 14 national holiday on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, July 15, 2016.

Nice attack: truck driver named as France mourns 84 killed in Bastille Day atrocity.Witnesses describe terror and chaos after armed man drove through crowds celebrating national day• Armed man drove truck through crowd for 2km• ‘A truck smashed into everyone. Everyone’ – video • Are you in Nice?

French prime minister Manuel Valls has said that although he cannot confirm the attacker’s motives, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel “is a terrorist probably linked to radical Islam one way or another”.Still, the prime minister told France 2 he had no doubt that the crime was terrorism. “It is a terrorist act and we shall see what the links there are with terrorist organizations.”He added that the death toll will probably increase – at last count 52 people remained in critical care, including 25 people on life support. Authorities have so far counted 202 people injured in all.Valls added a warning that more attacks could follow Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s example, but that France would not be deterred:“I am convinced we will win the war against terrorism and radical Islam.”Far more cautious was French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who told broadcaster TF1 that broadcaster TF1 was “not known to intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islam”.Asked whether he could confirm the a link to jihadism, he said: “No”.

Neighbors of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel have described the killer as a “frightening man” who kept to himself but showed no signs of radicalization, Reuters reports.

While a history of threats, violence and theft had caused him several run-ins with the law previously, Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Nice resident born in Tunisia, was not on a watch list of French intelligence services as a suspected militant.

He was convicted for the first time in March this year, French justice minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas said. “There was an altercation between him and another driver and he hurled a wooden pallet at the man,” Urvoas told reporters.

As it was his first conviction, Bouhlel was given a six-month suspended sentence and had to contact police once a week, which he did, Urvoas added. He had three children but lived separately from his wife who was taken into police custody on Friday, prosecutor Francois Molins said.

Tunisian security sources told Reuters Bouhlel had last visited M’saken four years ago. They also said they were not aware of Bouhlel holding radical or Islamist views, saying he had a French residence permit for the past 10 years without obtaining French nationality.

Neighbours in the residential neighbourhood in northern Nice where Bouhlel lived said he had a tense personality and did not mingle with others. “I would say he was someone who was pleasing to women,” said neighbour Hanan, standing in the lobby of the apartment building where Bouhlel lived. “But he was frightening. He didn’t have a frightening face, but ... a look. He would stare at the children a lot,” he added.

A former neighbour in Bouhlel’s hometown of M’saken, about 120km (75 miles) south of Tunis, told Reuters he had left forFrance in 2005, after getting married, and had worked as a driver there.

His home town of M’saken is about 10 km (six miles) outside the coastal city of Sousse, where a gunman killed 38 people, mostly British holidaymakers, on a beach a year ago.

Relatives and neighbours in Msaken said Bouhlel was sporty and had shown no sign of being radicalised, including when he last returned for the wedding of a sister four years ago.

Bouhlel’s brother Jabeur said he still doubted whether his sibling was the attacker. “Why would my brother do something like this?” he told Reuters, adding: “We’ve been calling him since yesterday evening but he’s not responding.”

Courtesy of The Guardian from London UK

Nearly 24 hours after a Bastille Day celebration was transformed into a nightmare, “locals and visitors returned to the Promenade des Anglais to lay flowers for the dead and to wonder exactly how, and why, the unthinkable had come to pass,” my colleague Sam Jonesreports from the city.

Throughout Friday, impromptu shrines had sprung up along the metal barriers that closed off the promenade. From one hung a tricolor with a black ribbon sewn on to the white central stripe. At another, a picture of Buddha watched over a dozen small candles. Someone had left a cigarette lighter and more nightlights on the ground so others could light candles and offer prayers.

Madame Bourmault, who lives two minutes from the promenade, came to one of the shrines with a bunch of flowers in her hand and tears in her eyes.

“I can’t sleep and I can’t breathe. It’s just horrible,” she said.

“What else can you say?” She had been down by the firework display on Thursday night, and seen a sudden tide of people screaming and running away. “In a fraction of a second, the music stopped and there was a lot of screaming. Everyone was running and no one was helping.”

On Bormault’s mind was a question that many around the world are asking: how had the truck managed to get on to the promenade? “It’s normally closed to traffic,” she said. However, she did not blame the police. “I don’t know what else the police could have done, but I don’t understand how the truck got in.”

She added: “You can’t put a policeman behind everyone - and there area lot of crazy people in this world.”

Leila Pasini, an Italian tourist from Milan on holiday in Nice, had been on the promenade before the attack but had returned to the flat where she was staying to make sure her dog was OK.

“We left just before the truck came and then I looked out of the window and saw a river of people running and crying. It looked like the apocalypse but I didn’t know what was going on.”

Pasini said she had heard that the truck had been close to the promenade for a long time and that the driver had explained that he was delivering ice.

“I don’t know whether that’s true or not,” she said. “But if it is true, then that’s very serious. Why would a truck be there for so long?”

By nine o’clock last night, life on the Rue de France, which runs close to the promenade, was slowly returning to normal. A few hundred yards from the scene of the atrocity, people walked their dogs and sat eating on restaurant terraces. Past them walked couples carrying flowers and clutching each other’s hands tightly.

Ita Murray and her friend Jackie Ellis, had arrived in Nice from London a few hours before the attack. They had intended to go and watch the fireworks but the day’s traveling had got the better of them and they chose to stay on their balcony.

“About 11, we saw all these youngsters running and screaming,” said Murray. “They were tearing around and we thought it was a prank.”

It wasn’t until nine on Friday morning, when they were awoken by phone calls from their anxious families, that they understood what all the shouting and running had been about. And that their fatigue had been a blessing.

“We were just too tired,” said Ellis. “Otherwise we would have been up there because there’s always something going on.”