One day after the horrific bloodbath, residents expressed the fear that the government and police might be powerless to stop terror attacks, despite the heavy presence of police and armed soldiers in public places over the past several months.
Emmanuel Bajux, 22, who had come to Nice from Paris to look for work in one of the many tourist bars, said he struggled to escape from the promenade on Thursday night, since the narrow roads leading up from the promenade were jammed with people fleeing. “There were people everywhere, running,” he says. Now, he says he doubts he will feel safe in Nice. “The city will not be the same again. We do not feel protected.”
In fact, the sense of danger was remote in Nice until Thursday. Low-cost airlines flew over the promenade, even on Friday, bringing plane loads of holidaymakers, who use Nice as their base to tour the Cote d’Azur.
But for locals, the attack has instilled a far more menacing feeling. In a city with a large population of second-generation French Muslims and North African immigrants, the fact that Bouhlel was born and raised in Nice hit hard, leaving some to speculate about his motives. “These people are manipulated by the mosques,” said Nadia Le Fur, an Algerian immigrant to Nice, who stood on the promenade on Friday with her 9-year-old son. “I tell my kids about the real Islam, and that we don’t believe in terror.”
Le Fur said she her husband had returned home at 3 a.m. on Friday, after his shift working in a hotel that sits on the promenade, and had clearly been deeply affected by the bloodshed outside. “He was very, very pensive and shocked, quiet,” she said. “I did not recognize that man.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment