On the evening of 14 July 2016, a 19-tonne cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and injuring 458 others. The driver was Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian living in France. The attack ended following an exchange of gunfire, during which he was shot and killed by police.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Lahouaiej-Bouhlel answered its "calls to target citizens of coalition nations that fight the Islamic State". On 15 July, François Molins, the prosecutor for the Public Ministry, which oversaw the investigation, said the attack bore the hallmarks of jihadist terrorism.
On 15 July, French president François Hollande called the attack an act of Islamic terrorism, announced an extension of the state of emergency (which had been declared following the November 2015 Paris attacks) for a further three months, and announced an intensification of French airstrikes on ISIL in Syria and Iraq. France later extended the state of emergency until 26 January 2017. The French government declared three days of national mourning starting on 16 July. Thousands of extra police and soldiers were deployed while the government called on citizens to join the reserve forces.
On 21 July, prosecutor François Molins said that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel planned the attack for months and had help from accomplices. By 1 August, six suspects had been taken into custody on charges of "criminal terrorist conspiracy", three of whom were also charged for complicity in murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise. On 16 December three further suspects, allegedly involved in the supply of illegal weapons to Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, were charged.
On December 13, 2022, eight people accused of helping the attacker were found guilty and given sentences ranging from two to 18 years. The attack has been classified as jihadist terrorism by Europol.
On the morning before the attack, French President François Hollande said the national state of emergency, put in place after the November 2015 Paris attacks, would end after the 2016 Tour de France finished on 26 July 2016. France had just finished hosting the Euro 2016 football tournament, during which the country had extensive security measures in place. Some matches were played in Nice, ending with the England–Iceland match on 27 June.
On the evening of 14 July in Nice, the Bastille Day celebrations on the waterfront Promenade des Anglais, dubbed "Prom'Party" by the city of Nice, drew crowds of 30,000 and included an aerial display by the French Air Force.
The Promenade des Anglais had been closed to traffic and, as in preceding years, a long section had been converted into a pedestrian zone. The customary Bastille Day fireworks display took place between 22:00 and 22:20.
On 14 July in Nice, at approximately 22:30, just after the end of the Bastille Day fireworks display, a white 19-tonne Renault Midlum cargo truck emerged from the Magnan quarter of Nice turning eastward on to the Promenade des Anglais, then closed to traffic, near the Fondation Lenval Children's Hospital.
Travelling at close to 90 kilometres per hour (56 mph) and mounting the pavement as if out of control, it hit and killed numerous bystanders before passing the Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen, where it was first reported by municipal police. 400 metres (1,300 ft) from the children's hospital, at the intersection with Boulevard Gambetta, the truck accelerated and mounted the kerb to force its way through police barriers—a police car, a crowd control barrier and lane separators—marking the beginning of the pedestrianised zone.
Having broken through the barrier, the truck, moving in a zigzag fashion, knocked down random members of the crowd milling about on the pavement and in the three traffic lanes on the seaward side of the Promenade. The driver tried to keep the truck on the pavement—returning to the road only when blocked by a bus shelter or pavilion—thus increasing the number of deaths. After reaching the Hotel Negresco, the speed of the truck, already travelling more slowly, was further slowed down by a passing cyclist, whose attempts to open the cabin door were abandoned after being threatened with a gun through the window. This was followed by a motorcyclist, who threw his scooter under the front wheels of the truck at the intersection with rue Meyerbeer, mounted the truck's running board and struck the driver before being hit with the butt of the driver's gun, suffering moderate injuries as he fell off the truck. The driver fired several shots at police from his 7.65 mm firearm, close to the Hotel Negresco, as police arrived; they returned fire with their 9mm Sig Sauer handguns, gave chase to the vehicle and attempted to disable it.
The truck travelled a further 200 metres (660 ft) until, in a badly damaged state, it came to halt at 22:35 next to the Palais de la Méditerranée approximately five minutes after the start of the attack. There, two national police officers shot and killed the driver.
Multiple bullet holes were seen in the windscreen and cab of the truck. The entire attack took place over a distance of 1.7 kilometres (1.1 mi), between numbers 11 and 147 of the Promenade des Anglais, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and creating high levels of panic in the crowds. Some were injured as a result of jumping onto the pebbled beach several metres below the Promenade.
In addition to the firearm used during the attack, an ammunition magazine, a fake Beretta pistol, a dummy grenade, a replica Kalashnikov rifle, and a replica M16 rifle were found in the cabin of the truck. Also recovered were a mobile phone and personal documents, including an identity card, a driver's licence, and credit cards. There were several pallets and a bicycle in the rear of the truck.
French police identified the perpetrator as Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old man of Tunisian nationality, born in Tunisia, with a French residency permit and living in Nice. His parents live in Tunisia and had rarely heard from him since he moved to France in 2005. His father said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel underwent psychiatric treatment before he moved to France. He married a French-Tunisian cousin, living in Nice, with whom he had three children. According to his wife's lawyer, he was repeatedly reported for domestic violence and the couple separated.
After this separation, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had a wild sex life according to the prosecutor, and had engaged in sexual relations with both men and women, according to an unnamed source. He was known to French police for five prior criminal offences; notably for threatening behaviour, violence, and petty theft. Neighbours reported that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel rarely spoke to them.
François Molins, the prosecutor leading the inquiry into the possible involvement of organised Islamist terrorism, announced on 18 July that information gathered since the attack suggested that, except for a short period leading up to the attack, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was "a young man completely uninvolved in religious issues and not a practising Muslim, who ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had an unbridled sex life."
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel sent small sums of money regularly to his family in Tunisia, according to his brother. Days before the attack, in a surprising move, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel persuaded some friends to smuggle bundles of cash worth 100,000 euros illegally to his family.