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Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and French President Francois Hollande was booed in Nice on Friday by people who blamed government authorities for failing to enforce sufficient security measures.

Thursday night’s massacre of pedestrians leaving a fireworks display along the southern city’s famed boulevard ended only after police killed the armed attacker in a hail of bullets.

Video shot by witnesses shows the truck coming under police gunfire as it drives through an intersection along the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais, which had been turned into a pedestrian walkway for the national day celebrations. Crowds flee in panic, taking shelter in shops and hotels, or leaping off the elevated pavement onto the beach below. Police finally surround the stationary truck and fatally shoot its driver.

Police identified the attacker as Mohamed Bouhlel (pronounced “boo-lel”), a 31-year-old Nice resident, and said he had drawn a gun on them. The truck’s front windshield was riddled with bullets, Bouhlel’s body slumped inside.

Chief prosecutor Francois Molins said police risked their own lives trying to stop the truck as it travelled two kilometres down the promenade.

Molins said Bouhlel’s estranged wife was arrested in Nice on Friday, while Bouhlel narrowly avoided being put behind bars months before the attack. He said Bouhlel had received a six-month prison sentence in March for a conviction for assault with a weapon, but other legal officials said his sentence was suspended because it was his first conviction. The weapon used was a plank of wood against another driver after a traffic accident.