NICE, France -- A truck loaded with weapons and hand grenades veered onto a sidewalk, traveling for more than a mile and leaving at least 80 people dead as it plowed through Bastille Day revelers late Thursday in the French resort city of Nice.
Officials and witnesses said the driver was shot to death by the police.
French President Francois Hollande said initially that 77 people, including children, were killed and another 20 were gravely wounded. "The terrorist character [of the attack] cannot be denied," he said.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve later raised the toll to 80.
"We are in a war with terrorists who want to strike us at any price and in a very violent way," Cazeneuve said.
Members of the Paris prosecutor's anti-terrorism office took over the investigation for "murder, attempted murder in an organized group linked to a terrorist enterprise." Investigators warned residents to stay indoors.
There was no immediate information on the driver's identity or what motivated his action.
Nice prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre described a horrific scene, with bodies strewn about along the roadway. However, he stopped short of using the word attack while acknowledging that "it has many ingredients of an attack that allow us to think that."
Eric Ciotti, who represents the Alpes-Maritime department that includes Nice in the French parliament, said the truck plowed into the crowd over a distance of 1.2 miles.
Ciotti said on BFM TV that police killed the driver "apparently after an exchange of gunfire."
Sylvie Toffin, a spokesman with the area prefecture, said the truck ran over people on a "long trip" down the sidewalk near Nice's Palais de la Mediterranee, a building that fronts the beach. She called the episode "an attack."
Christian Estrosi, a former mayor of Nice and currently president of the Regional Council of Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, said in one of a series of Twitter posts that the truck was carrying arms and explosives.
He added that the driver's behavior appeared to be "completely premeditated."
France's ambassador to the U.S., Gerard Araud, also characterized the events as a "terrorist attack."
Hollande said in a televised statement that all of France was under an "Islamist terrorist threat." He extended by three months a state of emergency that has been in place since the November attacks that killed 130 in Paris and was to end July 26. The decision needs parliamentary approval.
Besides continuation of the state of emergency and the Sentinel operation with 10,000 soldiers on patrol, he said he was calling up "operational reserves," those who have served in the past and will be recruited to help police, particularly at French borders.
Hollande said he was calling a defense council meeting today to gather key ministers before visiting Nice.
"[France] is strong. She will always be stronger, I assure you, than the fanatics that want to attack her today," he said.
France in the past two years has seen a series of assaults by jihadi groups, including the Islamic State extremist group.
'Bodies everywhere'
Images being broadcast across French media showed revelers running for their lives down Nice's palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais, the seaside boulevard named for the English aristocrats who proposed its construction in the 19th century.
Video footage showed men and women racing to get away from the scenes. And, in what appeared to be evidence of a gunbattle, photos showed a truck with at least half a dozen bullet holes punched through its windshield.
Witnesses described scenes of pandemonium in Nice, a seaside city of about 340,000.
"We were enjoying the celebrations when we suddenly saw people running everywhere and tables being pushed down by the movement of panic," said Daphne Burande, 15, who was at a bar near the beach to watch the fireworks.
"No one explained to us what was happening, and I heard some gunshots not very far away," she said. "I waited at the bar for more information because I thought it was a false alert. But then, people were still running."
Wassim Bouhlel, a Nice native, said that he saw a truck plow into the crowd. "There was carnage on the road," he said. "Bodies everywhere."
The president of the Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur regional council, which includes Nice, said the truck was loaded with arms and grenades. Christian Estrosi told BFM TV that "the driver fired on the crowd, according to the police who killed him."
Bouhlel said he witnessed the man emerge with a gun and start shooting
Writing online, Damien Allemand, a reporter for the Nice Matin newspaper who was at the waterside, said the city's fireworks display had finished and the revelers were leaving when they heard a noise and cries.
"A fraction of a second later, an enormous white truck came along at a crazy speed, turning the wheel to mow down the maximum number of people," he said.
"I saw bodies flying like bowling pins along its route. Heard noises, cries that I will never forget."
Maryam Violet, an Iranian journalist visiting Nice on vacation, told The Guardian that she saw the truck running into people as they left the fireworks show.
"I saw that suddenly people were fleeing and shouting," she said, speaking by phone from Nice. "People were shouting, 'It's a terrorist attack! It's a terrorist attack!' It was clear that the driver was doing it deliberately.
"People were celebrating" before the truck arrived, she said. "And it was so peaceful. It was a festivity vibe. It was right after the fireworks that the truck came and ran over people."
Footage showed a scene of horror up and down the promenade, with broken bodies splayed out on the asphalt, some of them piled near one another, others bleeding out onto the roadway or twisted into unnatural shapes.
"Help my mother, please!" one person yells out in a cacophony of screaming and crying. A pink bicycle is briefly seen overturned by the side of the road.
The origin and authenticity of the footage could not immediately be verified.
Kayla Repan, of Boca Raton, Fla., was among the hundreds gathered on the promenade to watch fireworks.
"The whole city was running. I got extremely frightened and ran away from the promenade," she said. "It was chaos. We hid in a restaurant but now we moved to a separate hotel."
European Council President Donald Tusk said it was a "tragic paradox" that the victims in Nice were celebrating "liberty, equality and fraternity" -- France's motto -- on the country's national day.
President Barack Obama condemned what he said "appears to be a horrific terrorist attack."
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and other loved ones of those killed," he said in a White House statement, adding that the U.S. has offered French officials "any assistance that they may need to investigate this attack and bring those responsible to justice."
Secretary of State John Kerry, who is in Moscow for meetings with Russian leaders, said the U.S. Embassy in Paris "is making every effort to account for the welfare of U.S. citizens in Nice." He urged Americans visiting Nice to contact friends and family directly.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump quickly took to Twitter, writing: "Another horrific attack, this time in Nice, France. Many dead and injured. When will we learn? It is only getting worse."
Democrat Hillary Clinton, appearing on Fox News, said the U.S. needs to "stand strongly" with France and strengthen alliances, including with NATO, to ferret out terrorism and prevent future attacks. Clinton said she would intensify efforts to put together a more effective coalition against terrorism.
The killings came on one of France's most treasured holidays, a celebration similar to the Independence Day in the U.S. Bastille Day commemorates the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison, which sparked the French Revolution and the end of the French monarchy. In Paris, the occasion is marked by a military parade down the Champs-Elysees, the oldest and largest regularly scheduled military parade in Europe.
Information for this article was contributed by Ciaran Fahey and Raphael Satter of The Associated Press; by Alissa J. Rubin, Christopher Mele, Adam Nossiter, Aurelien Breeden, Lilia Blaise, Elizabeth Alderman, Sewell Chan, Rukmini Callimachi and Rick Gladstone of The New York Times; and by William Branigin and Sarah Kaplan, Souad Mekhennet, James McAuley and Mark Berman of The Washington Post.
A Section on 07/15/2016