Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was behind the wheel of a truck that barreled into Bastille Day revelers and claimed 84 lives. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post) 
 
 Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was behind the wheel of a truck that barreled into Bastille Day revelers and claimed 84 lives. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post) 
 
 With the arrest of three more suspects Sunday, French authorities are widening their investigation into the Bastille Day truck attack that killed 84 people in this French Riviera city to include potential accomplices of the man the Islamic State described as one of its warriors. 
 
 French authorities arrested an Albanian man and woman who they believed supplied weapons to the 31-year-old attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. Authorities also said Bouhlel, who has been described by family and friends as a troubled loner, had sent a text message saying “Bring more weapons” to another suspected accomplice and had visited the scene of the attack days before the carnage. 
 
 Late Sunday night, authorities announced that they had detained the man believed to be the recipient of the text message. Seven others had been detained earlier in connection with the Thursday attack. They included Bouhlel’s ex-wife, but she was reportedly released from custody Sunday morning, according to authorities speaking to local media. 
 
 Bouhlel, 31, was a “soldier of the Islamic State,” the militant group declared Saturday. French authorities said the Tunisian-born attacker was inspired by terrorist organizations. 
 
 Twelve victims have not been identified, France’s minister of health, Marisol Touraine, told reporters Sunday. A 6-month-old child was among 18 people still in critical condition in the hospital. 
 
 The number of wounded rose to 256, according to the French prosecutor’s office, with 85 still hospitalized. 
 
 Bouhlel’s text message was sent at 10:27 p.m. Thursday, roughly a half-hour before the attack on the landmark Promenade des Anglais, where tens of thousands had gathered to watch a Bastille Day fireworks display. The phone Bouhlel used, police said, was found inside the rented 19-ton refrigerated truck after he mowed down people for more than a mile and was killed in a shootout with police. 
 
 French authorities on Sunday also provided more details that suggested the attack was carefully premeditated. 
 
 Two days before the violence, security-camera footage showed Bouhlel driving the truck on the Promenade des Anglais, apparently staking it out, Jean-Michel Decugis, head of the judicial police department, told local media. He added that Bouhlel also emptied out his bank account, according to one of the suspects in custody. He was supposed to have returned the truck to the rental company the day before the attack. 
 
 Investigators are also continuing to look into Bouhlel’s possible path to radicalization. It remains unclear whether the Islamic State orchestrated the attack, inspired Bouhlel and was taking responsibility, or was seeking publicity despite having no direct influence. 
 
 Thursday’s attack was the third major terrorist assault in France in the past 18 months. In January 2015, militants targeted the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris, and on Nov. 13, gunmen launched a wave of attacks in the city, focusing on the Bataclan concert hall. A huge outpouring of solidarity and resilience followed those attacks. But in the aftermath of the carnage here, anger and resentment at the government have erupted over what many French describe as a failure of security to protect the Bastille Day celebrations. 
 
 On Sunday, though, a sense of normality returned. Thousands of sunbathers flocked to the beaches of the Promenade des Anglais, sipping wine under blue umbrellas or windsurfing on the blue waters of the Côte D’Azur. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Anger in France over Nice attack focuses on apparently lax security 
 
 One of the first victims of the Nice terror attack was a Muslim mother 
 
 Two Americans among the dead in Nice attack 
 
 Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world 
 
 Annabell Van den Berghe contributed to this report. ||||| NICE, France (Reuters) - French authorities were trying to determine on Friday whether a Tunisian who killed at least 84 people by plowing a truck into Bastille Day crowds had acted alone or with accomplices, but said the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamist militants. 
 
 Thursday night’s attack in the Riviera city of Nice plunged France into new grief and fear just eight months after gunmen killed 130 people in Paris. Those attacks, and one in Brussels four months ago, shocked Western Europe, already anxious over security challenges from mass immigration, open borders and pockets of Islamist radicalism. 
 
 The truck zigzagged along the city’s seafront Promenade des Anglais as a fireworks display marking the French national day ended. It careered into families and friends listening to an orchestra or strolling above the Mediterranean beach towards the century-old grand Hotel Negresco. 
 
 At least 10 children were among the dead. Of the scores of injured, 25 were on life support, authorities said on Friday. 
 
 Witness Franck Sidoli said he had watched people mown down before the truck finally stopped just five meters away from him. 
 
 “A woman was there, she lost her son. Her son was on the ground, bleeding,” he told Reuters at the scene. 
 
 The driver, 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was shot dead by officers at the scene. He was known to police for petty crimes but was not on a watch list of suspected militants. He had one criminal conviction, for road rage, and was sentenced to probation three months ago for throwing a wooden pallet at another driver. 
 
 The investigation “will try to determine whether he benefited from accomplices,” Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. “It will also try to find out whether Mohamed Laouaiej Bouhlel had ties to Islamist terrorist organizations.” 
 
 “Although yesterday’s attack has not been claimed, this sort of thing fits in perfectly with calls for murder from such terrorist organizations,” Molins added. 
 
 Bouhlel’s ex-wife was in police custody, Molins said. He had three children. Police found one pistol and various fake weapons in his truck. 
 
 French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the evening news that Bouhlel was “one way or another” linked to radical Islam. “Yes, it is a terrorist act and we shall see what links there are with terrorist organizations.” 
 
 Yet despite numerous French officials from President Francois Hollande down describing it as a terrorist attack, by nightfall on Friday officials still had not disclosed any direct evidence linking Bouhlel with extremists. 
 
 Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, asked if he could confirm the attacker’s motives were linked to jihadism, said: “No. ... We have an individual who was not known to intelligence services for activities linked to jihadism.” 
 
 A U.S. official familiar with Washington’s assessment said the attack was thought to have been carried out by a “lone wolf” inspired but not directed by Islamic State. 
 
 The former top terrorism investigator for the French judicial system said that while the attack fits the profile of the kind undertaken by militant groups, the available evidence suggests the attacker had no evident connection with militant organizations or ideology. 
 
 Jean-Louis Bruguiere, formerly the top Paris-based investigative magistrate handling terrorism-related cases, told Reuters no French or European intelligence or security agency had any trace on the suspect and no evidence has surfaced to connect him to any militant group or other suspects or even to casual contact with militant literature or propaganda. 
 
 He said so far there is no evidence Bouhlel had any association with any religious group or faction but that there was evidence he was estranged from his family and going through some kind of divorce. 
 
 DRIED BLOOD, SMASHED STROLLERS 
 
 Dawn broke on Friday with pavements smeared with dried blood. Smashed strollers, an uneaten baguette and other debris were strewn about. Small areas were screened off and what appeared to be bodies covered in blankets were visible. 
 
 The truck was still where it had come to rest, its windscreen riddled with bullets. 
 
 “I saw this enormous white truck go past at top speed,” said Suzy Wargniez, 65, who had watched from a cafe on the promenade. 
 
 At Nice’s Pasteur hospital, medical staff were treating large numbers of injured. Waiting for friends being operated on was 20-year-old Fanny. 
 
 “The truck pushed me to the side. When I opened my eyes I saw faces I didn’t know and started asking for help,” she told Reuters. “Some of my friends were not so lucky. They are having operations as we speak.” 
 
 Neighbors in the neighborhood in northern Nice where Bouhlel lived described him as handsome but an unsettling presence. 
 
 “I would say he was someone who was pleasing to women,” said neighbor Hanan, standing in the lobby of the apartment building where Bouhlel lived. “But he was frightening. He didn’t have a frightening face, but ... a look. He would stare at the children a lot.” 
 
 Bouhlel’s Tunisian home town Msaken is about 10 km (six miles) outside the coastal city of Sousse, where a gunman killed 38 people, mostly British holidaymakers, on a beach a year ago. Many people from the area have moved to France, including Nice, and money they send back has made it comparatively prosperous. 
 
 A former neighbor in Msaken told Reuters Bouhlel had left for France in 2005 after getting married, and had worked as a driver. 
 
 Relatives and neighbors in Msaken said Bouhlel was sporty and had shown no sign of being radicalized, including when he last returned for the wedding of a sister four years ago. 
 
 A nephew, Ibrahim, said he had called three days ago saying he was preparing a trip back for a family party. Bouhlel’s brother, Jabeur, said he doubted his sibling was the attacker. 
 
 “Why would my brother do something like this?” he told Reuters, adding: “We’ve been calling him since yesterday evening but he’s not responding.” 
 
 Investigators continue to work at the scene near the heavy truck that ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores who were celebrating the Bastille Day July 14 national holiday on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, July 15, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard 
 
 GRITTY METROPOLIS 
 
 Nice, a city of 350,000, has a history as a flamboyant aristocratic resort but is also a gritty metropolis, where Islamist radicalism has brewed, away from the scenic streets of its old town. It and the surrounding Alpes-Maritimes region, with a population of just over a million, are thought to have produced as many as 10 percent of the French citizens who have traveled to wage jihad in the Middle East. 
 
 After Thursday’s attack, a state of emergency imposed across France after the November attacks in Paris was extended by three months and military and police reservists were to be called up. 
 
 “France is filled with sadness by this new tragedy,” Hollande said in a dawn address that called it an act of terrorism. 
 
 Nice-Matin journalist Damien Allemand had been watching the firework display when the truck tore by. After taking cover in a cafe, he wrote on his paper’s website of what he saw: “Bodies every five meters, limbs ... Blood. Groans.” 
 
 “The beach attendants were first on the scene. They brought water for the injured and towels, which they placed on those for whom there was no more hope.” 
 
 Police carried out a controlled explosion on a white van near the home, blowing the doors open and leaving shattered glass all around. It was not clear what they found. 
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 With presidential and parliamentary elections less than a year away, French opposition politicians seized on what they described as security failings that made it possible for the truck to career 2 km (1.5 miles) through large crowds before it was finally halted. 
 
 Christian Estrosi, a security hardliner who was mayor of Nice until last month and is now president of the wider Riviera region, had written on the eve of the attack to Hollande to demand more funding for police. 
 
 “As far as I’m concerned, I demand answers, and not the usual stuff,” Estrosi told BFM TV hours after the attack, questioning whether the government had provided enough national police officers for the fireworks display. 
 
 France is a major part of a U.S.-led mission conducting air strikes and special forces operations against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and has also sent troops to West Africa to battle Islamist insurgents. 
 
 “We will further strengthen our actions in Syria and Iraq,” Hollande said, calling the tragedy - on the day France marks the 1789 revolutionary storming of the Bastille prison in Paris - an attack on liberty by fanatics who despised human rights. 
 
 “We are facing a battle that will be long because facing us is an enemy that wants to continue to strike all people and all countries that have values like ours,” he said. 
 
 France is home to the European Union’s biggest Muslim population, mostly descended from immigrants from North African former colonies. It maintains a secular culture that allows no place for religion in schools and civic life, which supporters say encourages a common French identity but critics say contributes to alienation in some communities. 
 
 The Paris attack in November was the bloodiest among a number in France and Belgium in the past two years. On Sunday, a weary nation had breathed a sigh of relief that the month-long Euro 2016 soccer tournament had ended without serious incident. 
 
 Slideshow (25 Images) 
 
 Four months ago, Belgian Islamists linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in Brussels. Recent weeks have also seen major attacks in Bangladesh, Turkey and Iraq. 
 
 U.S. President Barack Obama condemned what he said “appears to be a horrific terrorist attack”. In televised remarks he later said the United States would stand with France and keep up the fight against Islamic State: “We will not be deterred. We will not relent.” 
 
 On social media, Islamic State supporters celebrated the high death toll and posted a series of images, one showing a beach purporting to be that of Nice with white stones arranged to read “IS is here to stay” in Arabic. ||||| Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Hundreds of tributes have been laid on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice 
 
 Five people believed to be linked to the man who killed 84 people in Nice are in police custody, the Paris prosecutor's office says. 
 
 Three arrests were made on Saturday and two on Friday, including the man's estranged wife, Le Monde reported. 
 
 Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a lorry into crowds marking Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais on Thursday before he was shot dead by police. 
 
 So-called Islamic State claimed one of its followers carried out the attack. 
 
 A news agency linked to the group, Amaq Agency, said: "He did the attack in response to calls to target the citizens of the coalition that is fighting the Islamic State." 
 
 'Extreme difficulty' 
 
 French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel seemed to have been "radicalised very quickly". 
 
 He said the "new type of attack... showed the extreme difficulty of the fight against terrorism". 
 
 Prosecutors said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, drove the lorry 2km (1.2 miles) along the promenade targeting people. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Marina and her mother Severine: "We can't sleep. We cry. We're scared" 
 
 Of the 84 who died, 10 were children. A total of 303 people had been taken into hospital following the attacks, the French health department confirmed on Saturday. Of those, 121 remain in hospital, 30 of whom are children, and 26 people are still in intensive care - including five children. 
 
 Stephanie Simpson, from the Lenval children's hospital in Nice, said one was in a "very bad" condition, three were on artificial respiration, one had been stabilised and one eight-year-old child remained unidentified. 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Among the victims of the attack were Sean Copeland (left) and his 11-year-old son Brodie (front) from the US 
 
 French President Francois Hollande met his defence and security chiefs and cabinet ministers on Saturday. 
 
 He called for national unity in France and said: "We are in a time when, and we have seen it, there is a temptation to divide the country. 
 
 "Faced with these temptations, faced with this risk, we must recall the unity and cohesion of this country." 
 
 Mr Hollande, who says the attack was a terrorist act, has already moved to extend a state of emergency by three months, and on Saturday France began three days of national mourning. 
 
 A state of emergency has been in place across France since the Paris attacks carried out by militants from the so-called Islamic State group. The 13 November attacks left 130 people dead. 
 
 Mr Hollande had proposed lifting the state of emergency on 26 July, but reversed his decision after the Nice attack. 
 
 Psychiatrist Dr Sylvie Serret treated many people, including children, who witnessed the traumatic attack in Nice, and she feared long-term post-traumatic stress or anxiety would set in, in some cases. 
 
 She told BBC News: "I was with people who were in shock, some couldn't speak or express themselves." 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Attack on Nice: 'Terrible scenes and terrible images in their heads' 
 
 Meanwhile, France's National Front leader Marine Le Pen has called for national service to be brought back, and a national guard to be created to protect France in the wake of Nice attacks. 
 
 Speaking in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, the far-right leader also called for the budget for the armed forces to be increased. 
 
 Some 30,000 people were on the Promenade des Anglais at the time of the attack on Thursday night. 
 
 Residents of Nice and foreign tourists were killed, among them four French citizens, three Algerians, a teacher and two schoolchildren from Germany, three Tunisians, two Swiss, two Americans, a Ukrainian, an Armenian and a Russian. 
 
 Analysis 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 By the BBC's Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield 
 
 On Thursday, in his Bastille Day interview, President Hollande announced with satisfaction that with new laws recently enacted against terrorism - and with extra resources for the police - it was finally time to end France's eight-month state of emergency. 
 
 But just a few hours later, in the wake of the Nice attack - he had changed his mind. 
 
 It's just this sense of uncertainty and vacillation at the top that the opposition has turned its sights on, with right-wing leaders quite openly breaking the customary post-terror political truce. 
 
 In varying degrees of outspokenness, they all accuse the president of failing to grasp the scale of the Islamist threat, and of indulging more in communication than action. 
 
 Some of this may be unfair - it's hard to see how even the most sophisticated security set-up could have stopped the Nice atrocity. 
 
 But the opposition is not wrong in sensing the public anger- and elections are only nine months away. 
 
 There was a visible security presence in Nice on Saturday morning and soldiers were patrolling the front of the main train station Gare De Nice Ville. 
 
 Stallholder Romain Ribero said France was used to high security in the wake of last year's Paris attacks. 
 
 "We feel safe. My children and my wife live here. We feel secure. I am already hurt after Paris, but we must go on," said the 37-year-old, who lost two friends in the November shootings. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption A reproduction of the residence permit of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, from French police sources 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Police were in force on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Hooded French police officers were pictured on Saturday leaving the address in Nice where Lahouaiej-Bouhlel lived 
 
 Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was known to the police as a petty criminal, but was "totally unknown to intelligence services... and was never flagged for signs of radicalisation," prosecutor Francois Molins said. 
 
 However, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he was "in one way or another" linked to radical Islam and Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the attack bore the hallmarks of jihadist terrorism. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nice attack: Footage of final gun battle 
 
 A neighbour of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who used to live in a high-rise block of flats on Boulevard Henri Sappia with his family, said he did not believe the 31-year-old was involved with IS. 
 
 Samiq, who did not want to give his surname, told the Press Association news agency: "I never saw him going to the Mosque. He was not a Muslim. During Ramadan I saw him smoking." 
 
 Image copyright PA Image caption People continue to place flowers and candles in Nice following the attack 
 
 Image caption Some of the tributes made reference to other violent attacks which have taken place around the world 
 
 Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Police have also laid flowers in tribute in Nice 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Despite the attacks many holidaymakers headed to the beach as usual to bathe in the sun 
 
 Speaking in Nice, the president of the Regional Council for the Muslim Faith, Boubakar Bekri, said mosques in the area had responded to the attack. 
 
 "Yesterday in all mosques in the region of Alpes-Maritimes, there has been a common prayer calling for vigilance and patience, because these very bad events affect us; and there has been a call for blood donation," he said.
– French authorities have arrested two more people—a man and a woman—in connection with the Thursday terror attack in which Mohamed Lahaouaiej Bouhlel drove a large truck through Bastille Day crowds in Nice, France. The man, a 37-year-old, is suspected of giving weapons to Bouhlel, 31, who was shot and killed by police during the rampage, the Telegraph reports. Just before the attack, according to reports, Bouhlel sent a text that read: "Bring more weapons, bring five of them to C." In another text, he says: "I've got the material." The latest people arrested were described as an "Albanian couple," per the Telegraph. With the latest arrests, seven people have thus far been detained for having a possible link to the attack, the Washington Post reports, though Bouhlel's ex-wife was released Sunday. As authorities in France investigate the third major terror attack in that country in 18 months, additional details have emerged. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tells a French newspaper, "We now know that the killer was radicalized very quickly." The Los Angeles Times reports Bouhlel started frequenting a mosque just three months ago; prior to that, acquaintances say he did things that don't jibe with Muslim codes, like smoke pot and wear shorts. Footage from security cameras in Nice shows Bouhlel driving along the Promenade Des Anglais on the two days before the attack. Beaches in Nice have re-opened, per the Post, "creating a jarring contrast between the tourists frolicking in the gentle Mediterranean surf and the blood-stained pavement above."