French security failed the people of Nice.
That’s what opposition politicians, who held their tongues after the last two major terror attacks in France, charged after a truck late Thursday tore through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the southeastern city, killing at least 84 people and critically injuring about 50 others.
Leaders of the center-right parties have maintained in the past that national unity was more important than scoring political points. Now, with nine months to go before France’s presidential elections, they’re not holding back.
“If all measures had been taken, this drama wouldn’t have happened,” Alain Juppe, an aspiring candidate in next year’s presidential election for The Republicans party, said on RTL Radio. “Obviously we must do more more, we must do better.”
France has been under a state of emergency since the Nov. 13 attacks at restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall in Paris that killed 130 people, deploying 10,000 military personnel to guard critical sites. That assault came after the January 2015 shootings at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and a kosher store near Paris. The Nice attack and four others of smaller scale in the last 18 months have brought the tally close to 240 dead and hundreds injured. Neighboring Belgium was hit by terror attacks at the Brussels airport and in the city’s metro.
‘I’m Angry’
“How is it possible that this truck could enter a totally pedestrian zone without there being any measures preventing him from taking this route?” Christian Estrosi, a member of The Republicans and head of the French region that includes Nice, said on BFM TV. “I can’t hide that I’m angry. After Charlie Hebdo, we forgot, and then we had the Bataclan and then we forgot, and we had Brussels, and after Brussels we forgot, and now we have Nice.