NICE, FRANCE—Now that the last bodies from the Bastille Day attack have been identified by authorities, it is clear that although the carnage happened on French soil, it disproportionately affected tourists and Muslims.

Among the 84 dead, 38 were from 19 different countries, announced the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They were from as close as Italy and Algeria and as far away as Madagascar and Brazil, and included Ukrainian citizen Mykhaylo Bazelevskyy, who had permanent resident status in Canada as a student. If the 200 wounded are included, the number of countries rises to 29, said a ministry spokesman, Romain Nadal.

No official count of Muslim victims exists, but Samy Boubakri, an imam at the Bon Voyage Mosque in Nice, says there were at least 25 Muslims from the local community among the victims. That number rises to 35 if foreign Muslims are included, he said.

“Muslims make up only 7 per cent of the population of France, but at least 30 per cent of the victims of the attack,” he told the Star.

The definitive identities of the dead took days to come out, leaving many families with an excruciating wait for news of their loved ones.

French officials say the delay was necessary to make sure no family would receive the wrong remains, a heartbreaking mistake that reportedly occurred after the Paris terrorist attacks in November. Forensic experts went to great lengths to confirm the identity of each body twice using different methods: one derived from the remains themselves, another from the victim’s family, such as dental records or a DNA sample taken from a toothbrush.

“It’s a scientific process in which the smallest error is tragic,” announced Juliette Méadel, the French secretary of state for victims.

Ever since the morning after the attacks, senior members of the Islamic community have been present at the hospitals to console victims’ families, lead prayers and offer counselling. Boubakri put his cellphone number on Facebook and promised to answer 24 hours a day.

“I’ve barely slept since last Thursday,” he said. “But this is when the community needs us most.”

Beyond spiritual support, the imams have had to step into an unexpected role: defending Islam from angry members of the public who accuse it of being the cause of terrorism.

“It hurts me when people tell me to go back to where I came from. I was born in France, grew up in France. I was educated in France. What do we have to do to finally be accepted as French?” asked Boubakri, who is also a member of the regional Union of Independent Islamic Institutions.

“People are emotional and they want to blame Muslims for terrorism, but we’re really the biggest victims of terrorism, here and abroad,” he said.

As 42,000 people gathered on the Promenade des Anglais on Monday for a moment of silence, tensions continued to flare. Several acrimonious exchanges between Muslims and non-Muslims were caught on video and posted to Twitter, going viral in minutes.

A small group of people booed Prime Minister Manuel Valls, calling him an “assassin” for failing to assure adequate security for the Bastille Day celebrations.

The state of emergency, which has been in force since the Paris attacks, was scheduled to be lifted next week. Instead, Tuesday evening, it was extended six more months. A late-night session of the national assembly provided a venue for opposition politicians to accuse the government of lying about the number of police on duty and the additional security precautions taken.

“You haven’t succeeded in protecting the French. This isn’t my opinion, it’s a fact,” said Eric Ciotti, the Nice representative for Les Républicains, a right-wing party. “It’s civil war or extremism that awaits us.”

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Valls, for his part, accused the opposition, which has a strong lead in the polls heading into the presidential election next spring, of making false promises.

He denounced “these shameful statements insinuating that all this could have been avoided. … If anyone in the chamber has the means of stopping terrorism in a few days, a few weeks, a few months, let him come forward.”

“The reality,” he said, is that, “there will be other attacks and other innocents will be killed. We must not get used to this, but to learn to live with this threat.”

Marine Le Pen, who leads the openly racist Front National, denounced Valls’s statements, saying they “can only incite the people to defeatism, discouragement and worry.”

“In any other country in the world, a minister with as dreadful a record as (Interior Minister) Bernard Cazeneuve — 250 deaths in 18 months — would have resigned long ago.”

Two hundred and thirty-five people have been killed in terrorist attacks in France since January 2015.

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