The man who used a 19-tonne 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, reports CNN.
"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 Islamic State (IS) group.
Earlier Saturday, a statement from IS' media group, Amaq Agency, said that an IS "soldier" carried out the attack in Nice.
The statement, which was posted by IS 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 IS, but noting that the attacker was responding to calls to act against the coalition - mirrors IS' 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 12th massacre.
French prosecutor François Molins said on Friday the attack in Nice fits with calls that "terrorist organizations regularly give out on their videos and elsewhere."