Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s toll in Nice could have been ‘much worse’

Witnesses describe the moment when Nice terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was neutralised.

People at a makeshift memorial in Nice last night.

Eyewitnesses to the atrocity in Nice where a big white truck deliberately mowed down and killed 84 people, including more than 10 children and injuring hundreds more, say the death toll could have been much higher if not for the actions of three police officers.

Eric Ciotti told Europe 1 that one person jumped inside the truck when it was stopped at an obstruction and wrestled a gun from the driver. “A person jumped on to the truck to try to stop it,” he said.

“It’s at that moment that the police were able to neutralise this terrorist. I won’t forget the look of this policewoman who intercepted the killer.”

Another British witness, who gave his name as Paul, said he had followed the truck down the Boulevarde fearing his wife had been killed and had to run over increasingly devastating scenes of carnage. He said three police saved the lives of many hundreds of others by stopping the vehicle.

‘’Just down the road there were thousands of people packed along the seafront, and the numbers of those killed would be many many more as there were a lot more people there if the police hadn’t killed him,’’ he said.

‘’He killed 80 or so by picking off groups of people, so if he had gone into the big crowd it would have been much much worse.’’

Now, just 24 hours after the carnage, hundreds of small candles flicker by the Boulevarde des Anglais as the long balmy evening descends into darkness, and shocked mourners and witnesses to Thursday night’s atrocity quietly comfort each other. Nearby some hotels are lit up in the national colours, and throughout the city, national flags are hung from balconies. The stillness and silence is at odds to the desperate work at the city’s hospitals where doctors have 25 people on life support and more than 50 people are in a critical condition.

People hold hands, hug and quietly blink back tears, placing a small bunch of flowers at a makeshift shrine to the 84 people killed by the big white truck driven by a maniacal 31 year old French national Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, originally from an area of Tunisia called Msaken. This is not far from Sousse, where a terrorist attack on the beaches claimed the lives of 38 people, including 30 British last year. But the mood here on the French Riveriera is one of supreme shock, deepening into an anger that Bouhlel convinced officials he was delivering ice-cream and then hurtled more than a mile down the street mowing all in its path just as revellers were moving off having watched the Bastille fireworks.

Bouhlel’s father Monthir told the BBC that his son had mental health problems and he would take medication but then ‘’have nervous breakdowns and demolish everything’’.

French president Francois Hollande arrived here earlier and spoke movingly of the many children — more than 10 — who died and others fighting ‘’between life and death’’.

“There were lots of children, young children, who had come with their families to watch a fireworks display, to have some fun, to be happy together,” he said. “They were struck to death to satisfy the cruelty of an individual and maybe a group.

“They are the evil ones and we are capable of defeating them,” Mr Hollande said.

The deputy mayor of Nice, Rudy Salles was on the seafront organising for the road to be opened as soon as possible after the devastating attack.

‘’Life has to go on,’’ he said. ‘’We want to open the road so we can begin living again.’’

Mr Salles said security for the Bastille fireworks was not as intense as it had been for Carnivale nor the recent Euro 2016 football competition as ‘’we thought the risk wasn’t as big’’.

President Francois Hollande had even announced the lifting of the state of emergency which had been in place since the Paris attacks last November, mere hours before the horrific attack on the firework revellers.

‘’We thought the risk wasn’t as big, everyone was here at the fireworks for the national day and everyone was relied, and happy to be here and then this crazy terror attack stopped everything and we are so shocked,’’ Mr Salles said.