‘Many foreigners and children’ among Nice 84 dead and so many injured

French President Francois Hollande said Friday that “many foreigners and young children” were among those killed or injured after the truck attack on a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, with around 50 fighting for their lives.

 “There are French among the victims and also many foreigners from every continent and many children, young children,” said a clearly moved Hollande in a speech from a hospital in the French Riviera city. “As I speak 84 people are dead, and around 50 are in a critical condition between life and death,” he added.

Witnesses said a truck drove at speed into a crowd for two kilometres (1.3 miles) after around 30,000 people had been watching a fireworks display on France’s national day. Hollande previously described the attack on the palm-lined Promenade des Anglais as being of an “undeniable terrorist nature”.

Nice attack: truck driver named as France mourns 84 killed in Bastille Day atrocity – live

Witnesses describe terror and chaos after armed man drove through crowds celebrating national day.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest says that Barack Obama has called François Hollande to “relay his condolences to the people of France on behalf of the American people”.
He adds that “the United States and France have made important progress in enhancing our security relationship” in the last year.
He says the secretary of defense and the office of the director of national intelligence succeeded in working with the French to create a better “information-sharing relationship”.
The president’s top national security adviser, Lisa Monaco, traveled to France and also worked on a new security deal with her counterpart. Earnest does not get into specifics, saying simple that the arrangement will help identify threats and prevent attacks.
“There is certain expertise that the United States has,” he says, and the secretary of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, has shared some of those techniques with French counterparts.
“Information sharing among European countries needs to be enhanced,” he goes on, arguing that this will in turn improve US security.
A reporter asks him about whether Obama believes the US is at war with terrorism. Earnest says that the president has long said that terrorists declared war on the US with the attack of September 11 2001.
“We’ve been at war ever since,” Earnest says. “And we’ve made progress.”
He says that the deaths of top al-Qaida leaders and the recent retreats of Isis are evidence that the US and western nations are succeeding against terrorism. Then he turns it to Congress, which has not yet passed a resolution – though not a declaration of war – that would sanction increased military action against Isis and other groups.
“This is the worst possible time for leaders or American leaders to suggest that Americans should start turning on each other. That’s exactly what the terrorists want us to do.”
Hours after the attack, parents were still looking for their children at the hospital in Nice’s Promenade des Anglais on Friday afternoon, my colleague Angelique Chrisafis reports from the city.
The worst thing was the sheer number of children coming in, the nature of their injuries – serious head trauma and broken limbs – and the emotion felt by the children and their families,” said Frederic Sola, a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon who worked in the hospital emergency room through the night. “The children were physically very injured but also emotionally very hurt.”
Some relatives were in such shock they were unable to talk. “The psychologists have heard terrible things, there are awful stories that children are telling,” said Stéphanie Simpson, head of the hospital’s communications team.
She said 39 people hit in the attacks had been brought to the children’s emergency department. A total of 30 children were treated at the hospital after the attack – the youngest only a few months old and the oldest was 18. Two children died in the night after being admitted. Several children were still in intensive care on Friday.