Alwaght- At least 84 people have been killed and dozens more injured after a truck plowed through a crowd during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, France.
The truck driver, Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was killed by police. Bouhlel has been named as a convicted criminal well known to the police for armed attacks.
French media described him "weird loner" who "became depressed" when his wife left him - and was regularly in trouble with the law.
Bouhlel not on a terrorist watch list and investigators are seeking to establish his motives - and are also looking for possible accomplices.
French authorities knew the Nice killer yet they were unable to prevent him carry out the deadly carnage. A recent Paris parliamentary investigation into last year’s attacks identified multiple failings by France’s intelligence agencies.
France imposed a state of emergency after almost 150 people were killed during attacks on Paris in November last year.
President Francois Hollande announced a further three months of national emergency following the Bastille Day attacks in Nice.
Speaking at a press conference in Paris, the leader said that France is a prime target for terror attacks because “human rights are denied by those fanatics”.
He announced that France’s state of national emergency will continue for three months more, as opposed to ending on 26 July as planned.
France is making hasty reactions in its war on terrorism and the problem appears to be growing in different dimensions.
One such hasty reaction was the deployment of 10,000 soldiers throughout France, with between 4,000 and 5,000 to be put on the streets of Paris alone after the November attacks. This number supplemented the 7,000 troops which had already been deployed since the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in which gunmen killed 17 people.
France Working Harder, Not Smarter
The authorities in France seem to be “working harder and not smarter.” Instead of solving the problem through intelligent and prioritized means France seems to be spending huge amounts of resources but unable to prevent an atrocity such as the one in Nice.
Such shallow measures and reactions are a catalyst for further polarizing the French society and aggravate the situation in future. Muslims in France and across the Western world normally bear the brunt of harsh knee-jack response by authorities in the wake of any terrorist attack.
The carnage in Niece also raises more questions than answers. Among the dead in Thursday’s attack which has been termed the worst in the history of the city, were children. Indeed many children were caught up in the attacks at a Bastille Day fireworks display, a symbol of French family get-togethers on a long weekend. At least 10 children lost their lives in this incident where the attack used a truck to commit his crime.
French Intelligence Predicted, but Failed to Stop Attack
Actually such an attack had been predicted by the French domestic intelligence (DGSI) chief Patrick Calvar who warned on the 26th of June 2016 that an ‘Islamist’ attack on French children would be the trigger for a civil war. He said France was currently on the brink of that civil war. Calvar also predicted that ISIS would use trucks as weapons. It is common in the protracted war on terror to hear accurate predictions by intelligence officials before attacks, with the same officials seemingly powerless to prevent them.
There are fears that the state of emergency in France would be permanent creating an autocratic the state and dividing the working class along religious and racial lines.
An endless state of fear would justify France’s deployment of forces to Syria, to supposedly target ISIS Takfiri terrorist group, but in fact a Western ploy to oust the government of President Bashar al Assad and finally destroy the glorious civilization of the Arab country.
The French government will also use the state of emergency to stifle the awakening of the the labor movement in the country. During the French labour unrest there have been cancelled trains, strikers burning tyres outside blockaded oil refineries and angry students on the streets. With the strict emergency laws in place, the Paris regime can use the pretext of war on terror to suppress any dissent by the labor movement. Considering the foregoing, more ‘terror’ attacks are likely to be a norm than an exception in France and other Western countries.
