World leaders united in horror and pledged their determination to fight terrorism on Friday after a truck attack on a Bastille Day crowd in the French Riviera city of Nice killed 84 people.
U.S. President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and European and Asian leaders meeting for a summit in Mongolia joined in condemnation of what they called a terrorist attack in messages to French President Francois Hollande.
Police sources said the truck was driven by a 31-year Tunisian-born Frenchman known to authorities for petty crime but not Islamic radicalism, who was eventually shot dead after an exchange of gunfire with police.
Dozens more people were injured. The dead included foreign tourists and students.
European Council President Donald Tusk, speaking in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, captured the global shock when he spoke of the “tragic paradox that the subject of #NiceAttack was the people celebrating liberty, equality and fraternity”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on the sidelines of the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Mongolia: “All of us who have come together at the ASEM summit are united in our feeling of disbelief at the attack of mass murder in Nice.”
