The truck driver who mowed down dozens of people in a murderous driving rampage in Nice could have killed more people if not for a man now hailed a hero for jumping into the speeding truck and slowing down the attacker.
Thursday’s attack happened as a crowd of revelers gathered for a Bastille Day fireworks display in the Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people, including 10 children, and leaving what one witness said was "bodies everywhere." Fifty-two people remain in critical condition.
French media broadcasts showed partiers in summer apparel running for their lives down Nice's palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais as a white 20-tonne truck cruised on, hitting people along the way.
Police have identified the attacker as 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
Police sources say the driver’s two-kilometre rampage could have been longer had it not been for one man’s courage.
Witnesses and police said that the unidentified man had jumped in the truck and wrestled with the gun-wielding driver.
"A person jumped on to the truck to try to stop it," witness Eric Ciotti told Europe 1 radio station.
He boarded the truck after it hit an obstruction, and wrestlde with the driver, who fired several shots at him and at police who arrived at the scene.
No one was hurt but policemen shot the driver dead.
Egyptian Nader El Shafei told the BBC he saw the driver "looking very nervous".
He said: "I kept yelling at him, waving with my hands to stop and trying to tell him that there is a lot people under his truck - dead already. But he did not give any attention to anyone outside the truck.
"And suddenly I saw him picking up something like a cellphone. I thought he would call the ambulance for the accident but it seemed that I was wrong, because he just picked up his gun and he started to shoot the police.
"Just when they (the police) arrived they just felt something was wrong so they kept yelling at him and when he did not step out - they saw him from the window taking his gun out.
"They knew that would be a gun shooting so they just killed him right away - they did not wait to negotiate or something, they just opened fire on him."
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