Truck attack in Nice kills up to 80: What we know, and what we don't

An attacker killed up to 80 people and injured scores when he drove a heavy truck at high speed into a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city of Nice late on Thursday, officials said.

Counter-terrorist investigators were seeking to identify the driver, who a local government official said opened fire before police shot him dead. The official said weapons and grenades were found inside the 25-tonne, unmarked truck.

The attack, which came eight months and a day after Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris, appeared so far to be the work of a lone assailant.

Newspaper Nice-Matin quoted unidentified sources as saying the driver was a 31-year-old local of Tunisian origin.

The truck careered for hundreds of meters along the famed Promenade des Anglais seafront, slamming into spectators watching the fireworks, listening to an orchestra or strolling above the beach towards the grand, century-old Hotel Negresco.

What We Know

• Around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, the truck sped down the promenade in the seaside city of Nice. French officials said that one man was identified as driving the truck, and he was shot dead by police.

• At least 77 people were killed, and dozens others injured, some of them severely, local officials said Friday morning.

• President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls convened an emergency meeting at the Interior Ministry in Paris to discuss the situation. The interior minister, Bernard Cazenueve, traveled to Nice.

• The Paris prosecutor’s office, which oversees counterterrorism investigations in France, has taken charge of the inquiry.

• France was already reeling from a string of terrorist attacks since the start of last year, including attacks in and around Paris in January and November that killed 147 people. Islamist extremists claimed responsibility for those attacks.

• The attack in Nice occurred on France’s national holiday — 227 years since the storming of the Bastille prison, a pivotal moment in the French Revolution — and in one of France’s most populous cities, during peak vacation season.

What We Don’t Know

• Who committed the attacks, and why.

• The extent and adequacy of the preparations that French officials had put in place to handle large crowds during the Bastille Day celebrations, especially in cities outside of Paris, the capital. Extensive security, including the hiring of private security agents,had been put inplace forthe recent UEFA European Championshipsoccer tournament.

• Whether France’s intelligence and security agencies had received any hints of the danger. On July 5, a parliamentary inquiry examining the attacks in January and November 2015 found widespread failures in the collection and analysis of information that could have helped prevent those assaults.

• Whether the state of emergency Mr. Hollande declared after the November attacks will be extended.