(nytimes.com)
NICE, France — The toll of an attack on a Bastille Day fireworks celebration in the southern French city of Nice rose on Friday to 84 dead and 202 injured, as the government identified the assailant as a 31-year-old native of Tunisia, extended a national state of emergency and absorbed the shock of a third major terrorist attack in 19 months.
“We will not give in to the terrorist threat,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Friday morning after a cabinet meeting led by President François Hollande. But Mr. Valls also offered a grim observation for his countrymen: “The times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism.”
Starting around 10:45 p.m. Thursday, the attacker mowed down scores of victims in Nice with a rented 19-ton refrigerated truck before engaging in a gunfight with three police officers, who pursued him down a storied seaside promenade before finally killing him.
The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, identified the man as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who was born on Jan. 3, 1985, and raised in Msaken, a town in northeastern Tunisia.
The police searched two locations in Nice on Friday, including a home with Mr. Bouhlel’s name outside it, and workers in hazardous-materials suits searched a truck, one much smaller than the one used in the attack. His ex-wife was held for questioning.
No organized group has claimed responsibility for the attack, although online accounts associated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have cheered it.
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