Attacker in Nice was ‘radicalized rapidly,’ French interior minister says

(CNN)-The man who used a 20-ton truck to plow down hundreds of people in Nice this week, killing 84, somehow became radicalized very quickly and hadn’t even yet shown up on any anti-terrorist intelligence radar, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday.

“It seems that the attacker got radicalized very rapidly,” Cazeneuve said of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31.

The minister said Bouhlel had not been known to the intelligence services previously, and he noted that authorities now face a new scenario with individuals who are becoming very sensitive to the messages of ISIS.

Earlier Saturday, a statement from ISIS’ media group, Amaq Agency, said that an ISIS “soldier” carried out the attack in Nice.

The statement, which was posted by ISIS supporters, said a security source told the agency that “the person who carried out the run over in Nice, France, is one of the Islamic State soldiers and carried out the operation in response to calls to target nationals of the coalition which is fighting the Islamic State.”

The particular wording of the statement — not claiming the attack as an outright act of ISIS, but noting that the attacker was responding to calls to act against the coalition — mirrors ISIS’ language in statements following the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, when it claimed gunman Omar Mateen as a “soldier.” Forty-nine people died in the June 12 massacre.

French prosecutor Franois Molins said Friday the attack in Nice fits with calls that “terrorist organizations regularly give out on their videos and elsewhere.”

New developments in the investigation

As the investigation continued, French authorities were questioning five people Saturday. Among them was Bouhlel’s ex-wife, who was taken into custody Friday, the anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said. The other four are men.

Bouhlel, a resident of Nice, was born in Tunisia but had a permit to live and work in France.

While Cazeneuve said no evidence had yet been found to tie Bouhlel to jihadism, a source close to the investigation told CNN that a phone number belonging to Bouhlel cropped up in a counterterrorism investigation into an associate of Omar Diaby, a 41-year-old Senagalese jihadi who lived in Nice before traveling to Syria.

Diaby, who calls himself Omar Omsen, commands a French jihadi batallion in Syria affiliated with Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria. The source said investigators made the link after cross referencing case files after the attack in Nice. Investigators are looking into the nature of the links between Bouhlel and Diaby’s associate, but they cannot rule out that the two were possibly just part of the same social circle.

French counter terrorism officials have established that a series of Youtube videos Diaby recorded in Nice in 2012 before departing for Syria helped motivate a significant number of French extremists to travel to fight in Syria. In May, Diaby revealed in a Skype interview with a French journalist that he had faked his own death in August 2015 to get medical treatment outside Syria.

Hollande warns of continued strikes

French President Franois Hollande, addressing his country following its third major terrorist attack in 18 months, described the assault as an “unspeakable act.”

“We have an enemy who is going to continue to strike all the people, all the countries who have freedom as a fundamental value,” Hollande said.

Bouhlel was shot to death by police after he barreled down the crowded Promenade des Anglais for almost a mile, crushing and hitting people who had gathered to watch the Bastille Day fireworks. More than 200 people were injured, and at least 55 of them were in critical condition Friday.

Bouhlel was identified by fingerprints after his identification card was found in the truck, authorities said.

He was known to police because of allegations of threats, violence and thefts over the past six years, and he was given a suspended six-month prison sentence this year after being convicted of violence with a weapon, authorities said.

Bouhlel’s father, who lives in Tunisia, said his son showed signs of mental health issues — having had multiple nervous breakdowns and volatile behavior, said CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank.

Despite his criminal record, Bouhlel was not on the radar for any kind of terror threat. The man was “entirely unknown by the intelligence services, whether nationally or locally,” Molins said.

“He had never been the subject of any kind of file or indication of radicalization.”