Two weeks before the massacre in Nice, a French-speaking fighter for the Islamic State group went on social media to urge Muslims in France to “go get a truck” and kill infidels.

That was exactly what Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel did on July 14, taking a rented truck and plowing through a mass of people watching fireworks on Bastille Day on the Riviera. He killed 84 people.

The Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS, has taken credit for radicalizing Bouhlel in one of its signature-style attacks: convince a “lone wolf” to commit mass killings and become a martyr, as happened in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

French officials have said that Bouhlel, by all accounts a misfit and petty criminal, was quickly radicalized. Officials say they have found no firm ties to the Islamic State, but the probe shows he searched information about the group on the Internet.

In the June 29 video, the fighter, speaking in French, urges Muslims in France to find weapons on the street from criminal elements.

“It is very easy to obtain weapons,” he says, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors jihadi traffic. “Just don’t let them know that this is for religious purposes.”

If you cannot find a gun, he says, then “go get a truck. … In France, you have access to gas tanks and trucks.”

The speaker said that, as French Muslims are having difficulty traveling to Turkey for insertion into Syria, the country of its self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa, it is better to stay and kill innocents at home.

“Open the doors of jihad on them, and make them regret it,” he said.

“So if you want Islam to be victorious, why would you want to come out of the beast and face its fangs when you can cut out its heart and liver,” he says.

MEMRI found the video on a channel in the messaging app Telegram used by French Islamic State members. It was likely produced in Mosul, Iraq.

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.