World

BEIJING — Beijing will close off access to part of the South China Sea for military drills, officials said Monday, after an international tribunal ruled against its sweeping claims in the waters.

An area off the east coast of China's island province of Hainan will host military exercises from Tuesday to Thursday, China's maritime administration said on its website, adding that entrance was "prohibited".

The area of sea identified is some distance from the Paracel Islands and even further from the Spratlys. Both chains are claimed by Beijing and several other neighbouring states.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague last week ruled that there was no legal basis for Beijing's claims to much of the sea, embodied in a "nine-dash line" that dates from 1940s maps and stretches close to other countries' coasts.

Manila — which lodged the suit against Beijing — welcomed the decision but China dismissed it as a "piece of waste paper".

Despite Chinese objections, the European Union weighed in on the subject at a regional summit last weekend, with President Donald Tusk telling reporters the grouping "will continue to speak out in support of upholding international law", adding that it had "full confidence" in the PCA and its decisions.

China pressured countries in the ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations not to issue a joint statement on the ruling, diplomats said.

Beijing held military drills in the South China Sea just days before the international arbitration court ruling, state media reported.

A combat air patrol was mounted over the Sea recently and these would become a regular practice in future, an air force spokesman said separately.

Bombers, fighters and other aircraft were sent to patrol islands and reefs including Huangyan Dao, spokesman Shen Jinke was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying.

Huangyan Dao, known in English as Scarborough Shoal, is disputed with the Philippines and is seen as a particular flashpoint.

China has rapidly built reefs in the waters into artificial islands capable of military use.

In a separate message on its website, the maritime administration said last week that four out of five lighthouses built atop islands and reefs in the sea have been activated, and a fifth would be put into use soon.

ISTANBUL/ANKARA — Turkey widened a crackdown on suspected supporters of a failed military coup on Sunday, taking the number of people rounded up in the armed forces and judiciary to 6,000, and the government said it was in full control of the country and economy.

Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gathered in front of his Istanbul home to call for the plotters to face the death penalty, which Turkey outlawed in 2004 as part of its efforts to join the European Union.

"We cannot ignore this demand," Erdogan told the chanting crowd. "In democracies, whatever the people say has to happen."

Pictures on social media showed detained soldiers stripped from the waist up, some wearing only their underpants, handcuffed and lying packed together on the floor of a sports hall where they were being held in Ankara.

One video on Twitter showed detained generals with bruises and bandages. Akin Ozturk, head of the air force until 2015 and identified by three senior officials as one of the suspected masterminds of the coup plot, was among those held.

The foreign ministry raised the death toll to more than 290, including over 100 rebels, and said 1,400 people were hurt.

The violence shocked the nation of almost 80 million, once seen as a model Muslim democracy, where living standards have risen steadily for more than a decade and where the army last used force to stage a successful coup more than 30 years ago.

It also shattered fragile confidence among Turkey’s allies about security in the NATO country, a leading member of the US-led coalition against the Daesh terror group. Turkey had already been hit by repeated suicide bombings over the past year and is struggling to contain an insurgency by Kurdish separatists.

With expectations growing of heavy measures against dissent, European politicians warned Erdogan that the coup attempt did not give him a blank cheque to disregard the rule of law, and that he risked isolating himself internationally as he strengthens his position at home.

Broadcaster NTV cited Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying more arrests were expected.

Authorities have rounded up nearly 3,000 suspected military plotters, ranging from top commanders to foot soldiers, and the same number of judges and prosecutors after forces loyal to Erdogan crushed the attempted coup on Saturday.

Among those arrested is General Bekir Ercan Van, commander of the Incirlik Air Base from which US aircraft launch air strikes on Daesh militants in Syria and Iraq, an official said. Erdogan’s chief military assistant was also detained, broadcaster CNN Turk said.

‘National will’

On Sunday, security forces clashed with remnants of the coup plotters at Istanbul’s second airport and at an air base in central Turkey, an official said. Arrests were made and the situation was under control, the official said.

Erdogan said the coup had been put down by the “national will”, blaming “those who cannot bear the unity of our country and are under the orders of masterminds to take over the state”.

He frequently refers to “masterminds” who he says are bent on breaking up Turkey, in what appears a veiled reference to the West in general, and more specifically, the United States.

On Saturday, Labour Minister Suleyman Soylu told broadcaster Haberturk he believed Washington was behind the coup attempt. US Secretary of State John Kerry described public suggestions of a US role as “utterly false”, and said on Sunday Washington had had no advance intelligence of the coup.

The Pentagon also announced on Sunday that operations from Turkey by the US-led coalition against Daesh had resumed after Ankara reopened its air space, which had been closed during the coup attempt.

However, US facilities were still operating on internal power sources after Turkey cut off the mains supply to the base. Kerry said the difficulty for US planes using Incirlik may have been a result of Turkish aircraft flown in support of the coup using the base to refuel.

‘Parallel structure’

The crackdown intensifies a long-standing push by Erdogan to root out the influence of followers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Erdogan accuses followers of Gulen, who was once an ally but is now his arch-enemy, of trying to create a “parallel structure” within the courts, police, armed forces and media with an aim to topple the state.

The cleric has denied this and said he played no role in the attempted coup, denouncing it as an affront to democracy.

Erdogan said Turkey’s justice and foreign ministries would write to Western governments to demand the return of Gulen’s supporters from those countries.

Kerry said he had no evidence that Gulen was behind the plot to seize power, and he urged Turkish authorities to compile evidence as rapidly as possible so the United States could evaluate whether he should be extradited to Turkey.

Even before the coup attempt was over, Erdogan promised a purge of the armed forces. “They will pay a heavy price for this,” he said. “This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army.”

At a rally late on Saturday, his supporters also demanded the coup leaders be executed. “Let’s hang them!” chanted the crowd in Ankara’s central Kizilay Square.

Erdogan’s critics say he will use the purge to create a pliant judiciary, eliminating dissenting voices in the courts.

Some European politicians have expressed their unease about developments since the coup attempt.

“[The coup attempt] is not a blank cheque for Mr Erdogan. There cannot be purges, the rule of law must work,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Ayrault told France 3 television European Union ministers would reiterate on Monday when they meet in Brussels that Turkey — which has applied to join the bloc — must conform to Europe’s democratic principles.

European Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said Erdogan would move Turkey away from the core values represented by the EU and the NATO defence alliance — of which it is a long-standing member — if he decided to use the attempted coup to restrict basic democratic rights further.

“He would strengthen his position domestically, but he would isolate himself internationally,” Oettinger, an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Some European politicians are also expressing concern about the future of a deal between the EU and Ankara that has helped to slow numbers of migrants crossing from the country to neighbouring Greece.

Gulen denial

A successful overthrow of Erdogan, who has ruled the country since 2003, would have marked another seismic shift in the Middle East, five years after the Arab uprisings erupted and plunged Turkey’s southern neighbour Syria into civil war.

But the failed attempt could still destabilise the US ally, which lies between Europe and the chaos of Syria.

Gulen said the attempted overthrow may have been staged to justify a crackdown.

“As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt. I categorically deny such accusations,” Gulen said in a statement.

Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party has long had strained relations with the military, which has a history of mounting coups to defend secularism although it has not seized power directly since 1980.

His conservative religious vision for Turkey’s future has also alienated many ordinary citizens who accuse him of authoritarianism. Police used heavy force in 2013 to suppress mass protests demanding more freedom.

Erdogan commands the admiration and loyalty of millions of Turks, however, particularly for raising living standards and restoring order to an economy once beset by regular crises.

‘Necessary measures’

Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek took to Twitter to try to reassure investors the government was in full control of the economy before financial markets opened on Monday.

“The macro fundamentals of our country are solid. We are taking all necessary precautions. We are strong with the support of our people and strengthened political stability,” he said on Twitter, adding that he planned to hold a conference call with global investors on Sunday.

The central bank said it would provide unlimited liquidity to banks.

For at least eight hours overnight on Friday violence shook Turkey’s two main cities. But the coup attempt crumbled as Erdogan rushed back to Istanbul from a Mediterranean holiday and urged people to take to the streets in support of his government against plotters he accused of trying to kill him.

US President Barack Obama has also urged parties on all sides of the crisis to avoid destabilising Turkey and follow the rule of law.

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Three officers are confirmed dead and three others wounded after a shooting in Baton Rouge, a sheriff's office spokeswoman said Sunday. One suspect is dead and law enforcement officials believe two others are still at large, the spokeswoman said.

Casey Rayborn Hicks, a spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office, said in a statement that the public should call 911 immediately if they see anything suspicious.

The shooting — which happened just before 9am, less than 1 mile from police headquarters — comes amid spiralling tensions across the city — and the country — between the black community and police. The races of the suspect or suspects and the officers were not immediately known.

Baton Rouge Police Sgt. Don Coppola told The Associated Press earlier that the officers were rushed to a local hospital. Coppola said authorities are asking people to stay away from the area.

Multiple police units were stationed at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, where stricken officers were believed to be undergoing treatment at a trauma centre. A police officer with a long gun was blocking the parking lot at the emergency room.

Officers and deputies from the Baton Rouge Police Department and East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office were involved, according to Hicks.

An Associated Press reporter on the scene saw police vehicles with lights flashing massed about 0.8km from the police headquarters on Airline Highway. Police armed with long guns on the road stopped at least two vehicles driving away from the scene and checked their trunks and vehicles before allowing them to drive away.

Police-community relations in Baton Rouge have been especially tense since the killing of 37-year-old Alton Sterling, a black man killed by white officers earlier this month after a scuffle at a convenience store. The killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely on the internet.

It was followed a day later by the shooting death of another black man in Minnesota, whose girlfriend livestreamed the aftermath of his death on Facebook. Then on Thursday, a black gunman in Dallas opened fire on police at a protest about the police shootings, killing five officers and heightening tensions even further.

Over the weekend, thousands of people took to the streets in Baton Rouge to condemn Sterling's death, including hundreds of demonstrators who congregated outside the police station. Authorities arrested about 200 people over the three-day weekend.

Michelle Rogers, 56, said the pastor at her church had led prayers Sunday for Sterling's family and police officers, asking members of the congregation to stand up if they knew an officer.

Rogers said an officer in the congregation hastily left the church near the end of the service, and a pastor announced that "something had happened". 

"But he didn't say what. Then we started getting texts about officers down," she said.

Rogers and her husband drove near the scene, but were blocked at an intersection closed down by police.

"I can't explain what brought us here," she said. "We just said a prayer in the car for the families."

AMMAN — The permanent representatives to the UN of Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Malaysia and Ukraine on Sunday recalled their full commitment to bring to justice those responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014 in Ukraine.

On behalf of their governments, the countries restated their deep sympathy and condolences to the families of victims of the tragic event and to all grieving nations on the second anniversary of the downing of the airliner, according to a statement made available to The Jordan Times.

The countries recalled the concern expressed by the Security Council in Resolution 2166 (2014) about acts of violence that pose a threat to the safety of international civil aviation, the statement said.

The countries also renewed the demand by the Security Council that “those responsible for this incident be held accountable” and reiterated their commitment to achieving that objective, and further recalled the Security Council’s demand that “all States cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability”.

SRINAGAR, India — Authorities in India's portion of Kashmir have shut down printing presses and temporarily banned newspapers from publishing in a sweeping information blackout after days of anti-India protests left dozens of people dead in the volatile region.

State government spokesman and Education Minister Nayeem Akhtar said the measures were aimed at saving lives and strengthening peace efforts. The government says 36 people — 35 civilians and a police officer — have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces, while local human rights groups and newspapers say at least 40 have died.

A strict curfew was in effect in troubled areas for the ninth straight day Sunday, with hundreds of thousands of people trying to cope with shortages of food and other necessities. Tens of thousands of government troops patrolled mostly deserted streets in the region, where shops and businesses remained closed.

Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim region, is divided evenly between India and Pakistan, but both claim it in its entirety. Most people in India's portion resent the presence of Indian troops and want independence or a merger with Pakistan.

Since 1989, more than 68,000 people have been killed in the uprising against Indian rule and the subsequent Indian military crackdown. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over control of Kashmir since British colonialists left the Indian subcontinent in 1947.

Unwilling to take any chances, Indian authorities appear to be persisting with their clampdown to avoid aggravating tensions in view of Pakistan's call for a "black day" on Wednesday to protest India's handling of dissent in Kashmir.

On Friday, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed that his country would continue extending political, moral and diplomatic support to Kashmiris. He said he called for observing the "black day" to express solidarity with "Kashmiris who are facing atrocities at the hands of Indian forces”. 

The largest street protests in recent years in India's portion of Kashmir erupted last week after Indian troops killed the popular young leader of the largest rebel group fighting against Indian rule in the region.

Information has been thin, with most cellular and internet services, as well as landline phone access, not working in the troubled areas, except for Srinagar, the main city in the Indian portion of Kashmir.

Police began raiding newspaper offices and seizing tens of thousands of local newspapers on Saturday, imposing a ban on their printing until Monday. They also detained scores of printing press workers.

Newspaper editors denounced the government action and termed it "gagging and enforcing emergency on media".
The Kashmir Reader, a daily English newspaper, said on its website Sunday that "the government has banned local media publications in Kashmir", and called on its readers to "bear with us in this hour of crisis". Most English dailies, however, continued uploading news onto their websites.

Editors and journalists held a protest march in Srinagar late Saturday, carrying placards reading "Stop censorship" and "We want freedom of speech." Meanwhile, anti-India protests have persisted, marked by clashes between rock-throwing Kashmiris and troops firing live ammunition, pellet guns and tear gas.

Clashes were reported in several places in northern Kashmir on Sunday, and at least six people were injured, police said.

In the latest fatality late Saturday, government forces fired bullets at villagers who threw stones at them and tried to torch a police station in a remote village in the northern Kupwara area, close to the highly militarized Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, a police official said.

One young villager was killed and at least two other people were wounded in the firing, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to reporters.

Authorities on Sunday extended the summer break for schools and colleges for a week, until July 24.

ANKARA — Pouring out into the streets, forces loyal to Turkey's president quashed a coup attempt in a night and day of explosions, air battles and gunfire. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that those responsible "will pay a heavy price for their treason" and demanded that the United States extradite the cleric he blamed for the attempted overthrow of his government.

The chaos Friday night and Saturday left about 265 people dead and over 1,400 wounded, according to authorities. After reclaiming control of the country, Turkish officials arrested or fired thousands of troops and judges they claimed were followers of the US-based moderate Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gulen.

Top Turkish officials — including the president, the prime minister and the interior minister — all urged supporters to come out to city squares again Saturday night to defend the country's democracy.

Massive crowds did just that — singing and waving Turkish flags in Istanbul's neighbourhood of Kisikli, in Izmir's Konak square and the northeastern city of Erzincan. A festive crowd also formed in Ankara's Kizilay Square.

The unrest came as Turkey — a NATO member and key Western ally in the fight against the Daesh terror group — has already been mired in political turmoil that critics blame on Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian rule. Erdogan, who stayed in power by switching from being prime minister to president, has shaken up the government, cracked down on dissidents, restricted the news media and renewed fighting with Kurdish rebels that has left parts of the southeast in an urban war zone.

The government is also under pressure from hosting millions of refugees who have fled the violence in neighbouring Syria and Iraq, and from a series of bloody attacks blamed on Daesh extremists and Kurdish rebels.

Erdogan was on a seaside vacation when tanks rolled into the streets of Ankara and Istanbul overnight Friday, blocking key bridges. From a cellphone, he delivered a televised address that called for huge crowds to come out and defend Turkey’s democracy — which they did in Ankara, the capital, and in Istanbul, facing off against troops who had blocked key Bosphorus bridges that link the city’s Asian and European sides.

“They have pointed the people’s guns against the people. The president, whom 52 per cent of the people brought to power, is in charge. This government brought to power by the people is in charge,” he told large crowds after landing at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport early Saturday and declaring the coup a failure.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim described the night as “a black mark on Turkish democracy” and said the perpetrators “will receive every punishment they deserve”. He said July 15 will be remembered as “a festival for democracy”, the day when those who carried out a coup against the people were hit by a coup themselves.

Late Saturday, Defence Minister Fikri Isik said state authorities were in full control of all areas in Turkey but warned that authorities would remain vigilant.

The uprising appears not to have been backed by the most senior ranks of the military. Gen. Umit Dundar said the plotters were mainly officers from the air force, the military police and the armored units.

Turkey’s four main political parties released a joint declaration during an extraordinary parliamentary meeting Saturday denouncing the coup attempt and declaring that any further moves against the people or parliament would be met “with the iron will of the Turkish Grand National Assembly resisting them”.

The statement praised Turks for taking to the streets and resisting the coup.

The death toll from the unrest appeared to be around 265 people. Yildirim said 161 people were killed and 1,440 wounded in the process of putting down the coup attempt and 2,839 plotters were detained. A source at the office of the presidency, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government rules, said the 161 “excludes assailants”. Dundar said at least 104 “coup plotters” had died.

Turkey’s NATO allies lined up to condemn the coup attempt. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged all sides to support Turkey’s democratically elected government and Obama held a meeting with his national security advisers. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg spoke to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and urged the Turkish people to respect democracy.

US airline regulators banned all flights between the US and airports in Ankara and Istanbul, including flights to the US via third countries.

While government officials blamed the coup attempt on Gulen, the cleric said he condemned “in the strongest terms, the attempted military coup in Turkey” and sharply rejected any responsibility for it.

“Government should be won through a process of free and fair elections, not force,” Gulen said. “As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt. I categorically deny such accusations.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday the Obama administration would entertain an extradition request but Turkey would have to prove wrongdoing by Gulen.

The cleric, who left Turkey in 1999, now lives in exile in Pennsylvania and promotes a philosophy that blends a mystical form of Islam with staunch advocacy of democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue.

“We would invite the government of Turkey, as we always do, to present us with any legitimate evidence that withstands scrutiny. And the United States will accept that and look at it and make judgements about it appropriately,” Kerry said.

Even before the unrest was under control, Erdogan’s government pressed ahead Saturday with a purge of Turkish judicial officials, with 2,745 judges being dismissed across Turkey for alleged ties to Gulen, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency. It said 10 members of Turkey’s highest administrative court were detained and arrest warrants were issued for 48 administrative court members and 140 members of Turkey’s appeals court.

Among those detained for questioning was the commander of Turkey’s second army, Gen. Adem Huduti, and other top aides in the eastern city of Malatya, Anadolu said.

The coup attempt began late Friday, with a military statement saying forces had seized control “to reinstal the constitutional order, democracy, human rights and freedoms, to ensure that the rule of law once again reigns in the country, for law and order to be reinstated”.

Fighter jets buzzed overhead, gunfire erupted outside military headquarters and vehicles blocked two major bridges in Istanbul. Soldiers backed by tanks blocked entry to Istanbul’s airport for a couple of hours before being overtaken by pro-government crowds carrying Turkish flags.

Top military commanders went on television to condemn the action and order troops back to their barracks. By early Saturday, the putsch appeared to have fizzled.

CNN-Turk showed dozens of soldiers walking among tanks with their hands held up, surrendering to government forces. Discarded gear was strewn on the ground. Some flag-waving people climbed onto the tanks. The Hurriyet newspaper, quoting investigators, said some privates had thought they were on military maneuvers, not a coup attempt.

A Blackhawk military helicopter with seven Turkish military personnel and one civilian landed in the Greek city of Alexandroupolis, where the passengers requested asylum. While Turkey demanded their extradition, Greece said it would hand back the helicopter and consider the men’s asylum requests.

Fighting continued into the early morning, with huge blasts echoing across Istanbul and Ankara, including at least one bomb that hit the parliament complex, scattering broken glass and other debris across a lobby. CNN-Turk said two bombs hit near the presidential palace, killing five people and wounding others.

Turkey is a key partner in US-led efforts to defeat the Daesh terror group, and has allowed American jets to use its Incirlik air base to fly missions against the extremists in Syria and Iraq. The Pentagon said US warplanes stopped flying missions against Daesh after the Turkish government closed its airspace early Saturday to military aircraft, and US officials were working with Turkey to resume air operations as soon as possible.

Erdogan’s Islamist government has also been accused of playing an ambiguous — even double-sided — role in Syria. Turkey’s renewed offensive against Kurdish militants — who seek more autonomy and are implacable foes of Daesh — has complicated the US-led fight against Daesh.

Fadi Hakura of the Chatham House think tank in London said the attempted coup appeared to have been “carried out by lower-ranking officers”.

“Their main gripe seems to have been President Erdogan’s attempt to transform his office into a powerful and centralised executive presidency,” Hakura said. “In the short term, this failed coup plot will strengthen President Erdogan.”

Turkey’s military staged three coups between 1960 and 1980 and pressured Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, a pious mentor of Erdogan, out of power in 1997.

NICE, France — The Daesh terror group claimed responsibility Saturday for the truck massacre in Nice, as France highlighted the "extreme difficulty" of preventing such attacks amid tough questions over security failures.

In a statement via its Amaq news service, Daesh said one of its "soldiers" carried out Thursday night's attack "in response to calls to target nations of coalition states that are fighting [Daesh]". 

Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, ploughed a 19-tonne truck into a crowd of people who had been watching Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city, killing 84 and injuring 200. 

After crisis talks in Paris, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian noted that Daesh had recently repeated calls for supporters to "directly attack the French, Americans, wherever they are and by whatever means".

"Even when Daesh is not the organiser, Daesh breathes life into the terrorist spirit that we are fighting," he said.

Facing its third major terror attack within 18 months, the French government is coming under fire from opposition politicians and newspapers demanding more than "the same old solemn declarations".

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that, after gunmen and suicide bombings, France was now facing "a new kind of attack".

Speaking as France began three days of mourning on Saturday, he said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel "had not been known to the intelligence services because he did not stand out... by being linked with radical Islamic ideology".

Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the National Front party, called on Cazeneuve to step down.

"In any other country in the world, a minister with a toll as horrendous as Bernard Cazeneuve — 250 dead in 18 months — would have quit," she said.

'Radicalised quickly' 

Police said Saturday they had arrested four more people linked to Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, in addition to his estranged wife who was taken into custody on Friday. 

Cazeneuve said the father-of-three "seemed to have been radicalised very quickly, from what his friends and family" have told police.

"We are now confronted with individuals open to IS's [Daesh’s] message to engage in extremely violent actions without necessarily having been trained or having the weapons to carry out a mass [casualty] attack."

At least 10 children were among the dead as well as tourists from the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Switzerland and Germany.

A spokeswoman for the Nice paediatric hospital said 16 bodies had not yet been identified. She said five children were still in "critical condition", and an eight-year-old in a stable condition had not been identified.

Tahar Mejri is one of 30,000 people who had gone to watch the fireworks on the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais, when their night turned to horror as the truck left mangled bodies strewn in its wake.

He lost his wife in the attack and was hunting on Saturday for his four-year-old son, Kylan.

“I have called everywhere, police stations, hospitals, Facebook and I can’t find my son. I have been looking for him for 48 hours,” he told AFP.

“My wife is dead, where is my son?”

Hours later, he emerged screaming from the Pasteur Hospital in the north of Nice after learning that his son was dead.

France ‘deeply shocked’ 

Cazeneuve said the carnage had “deeply shocked the French and at the same time shows the extreme difficulty of the anti-terrorism fight”.

Daesh also claimed responsibility for the November 13 attacks which killed 130 people in Paris, while gunmen in January 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo weekly and a Jewish supermarket were linked to both IS and Al Qaeda.

A French parliamentary inquiry last week criticised numerous failings by the intelligence services over the Paris attacks.

France is also home to hundreds of extremists who have flocked to fight alongside Daesh.

Presidential contender and former prime minister Alain Juppe said Friday that the latest carnage could have been prevented if “all measures” had been taken.

But government spokesman Stephane Le Foll slammed Juppe’s comments, saying there were more than 185 police, gendarmes and soldiers on the ground, as well as municipal police and a vast network of surveillance cameras.

“Despite all of that, this man’s decisions... created the drama and horror we experienced.”

Cazeneuve also defended the security measures taken for the celebrations of France’s national day.

He said police cars were unable to follow the truck onto the seaside walkway after it had “violently forced through the barriers” and onto the sidewalk.

The truck zigzagged for two kilometres through the crowd before police bullets killed the driver and brought an end to the carnage.

Depressed loner 

Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s father said he had suffered from depression and had “no links” to religion.

“From 2002 to 2004, he had problems that caused a nervous breakdown. He would become angry and he shouted... he would break anything he saw in front of him,” Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej-Bouhlel said in Tunisia.

Neighbours described the attacker, who worked as a delivery man, as a loner who never responded to their greetings.

He and his wife had three children, but she had demanded a divorce after a “violent argument”, one neighbour said.

NICE, France — The rogue driver who turned a night of fireworks and fun into the worst carnage the French resort city of Nice has seen in decades appeared aloof and menacing to his neighbours and family, while authorities said Saturday that he had recently turned to religious extremism.

The Daesh terror group claimed Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel as one of its "soldiers" on Saturday, but what little is known so far about the 31-year-old Tunisian suggests a troubled, unpleasant person who showed little outward interest in Islam.

Bouhlel was born in Msaken, a town in Tunisia, but moved to France years ago and was living in the country legally, working as a delivery driver. At one point he married, and later moved to an apartment bloc in the Quartier des Abattoirs — the Slaughterhouse District — on the outskirts of Nice.

Neighbours described the father of three as a volatile man, prone to drinking and womanising, who was in the process of getting a divorce.

"I saw him four times a day," said Jasmine Corman, who has lived in Bouhlel's pale yellow apartment building for six months. "He wasn't very nice... He was handsome, but his face was miserable." 

Back in Tunisia, Bouhlel's father said his son was prone to violent episodes during which "he broke everything he found around him”. 

"Each time he had a crisis, we took him to the doctor, who gave him medication," Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel told BFM television, even showing journalists what he said was a document about his son's psychiatric treatment.

Bouhlel said his son hadn't visited Tunisia in four years and hadn't stayed in contact with his family.

"What I know is that he didn't pray, he didn't go to the mosque, he had no ties to religion," said the father, noting that Bouhlel didn't respect the Islamic fasting rituals during the month of Ramadan — an account seconded by neighbours in Nice.

Bouhlel had had a series of run-ins with the law in France for threatening behavior, violence and theft over the past six years. In March, he was given a six-month suspended sentence by a Nice court for a road-rage incident in which he attacked another driver with a wooden pallet.

His court-appointed lawyer, Corentin Delobel, said he observed "no radicalisation whatsoever" of Bouhlel and Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Bouhlel was never placed on a watch list for radicals.

But hints of a sudden turn to religious extremism began to emerge Saturday. After the Daesh group claimed Bouhlel as one of their own, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said told reporters the driver had been "radicalised very quickly", citing information from the five people taken into custody following the attack.

The chronology of Bouhlel's last night is still being pieced together.

Records show the 19 metric tonne truck that he rammed through the seaside crowd in Nice was rented in the outskirts of the city on July 11 and was overdue on Thursday, the night of the attack.

About 25 minutes before the July 14 fireworks show — which commemorated Bastille Day, France's national holiday — Bouhlel drove toward the city centre. Shortly after 10:30pm, he reached the Promenade des Anglais, driving up on the sidewalk to avoid the police cars blocking the road. He then took aim at the thousands who had gathered to watch the fireworks show, killing at least 84 people and wounding over 200.

Witnesses described seeing Bouhlel purposely steer the truck to hit families as they tried to flee.

"It was such a nice atmosphere before this started," recalled Sanchia Lambert, a tourist from Sweden who had come to visit family in Nice. "There were people playing drums, kids riding their bikes. That makes what happened all the worse." 

Her husband, John Lambert, said the couple was almost struck by Bouhlel's truck.

"I saw his face," Lambert told The Associated Press. "He was totally focused."

PARIS — In 18 months France has been the target of three major terrorist attacks claimed by extremists in which more than 230 people have died.

The country has also been kept on edge by a succession of shocking but less bloody attacks and attempts to kill, often by lone extremists.

With the Daesh terror group claiming responsibility for the latest massacre in Nice in which 84 people were killed, we ask why France has become such a target for extremist violence:

Fight against terror

From sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East, France is in the front line of the fight against radical Islamist groups.

It is the second biggest contributor to US-led air strikes against Daesh in Iraq and Syria. 

Ahead of Thursday's Nice attack, President Francois Hollande announced that the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, a symbol of French military power, was being deployed anew in the Middle East.

France has declared itself "at war" since the November 13 attacks in Paris in which 130 people died, which investigators believe was planned by Daesh from Syria and Iraq. 

In sub-Saharan Africa France has 3,000 military personnel on the ground taking part in Operation Barkhane, targeting several extremist groups such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) 

But despite being weakened by French military intervention in Mali in 2013, AQIM continues to mount spectacular attacks such as those in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou and at Grand Bassam in the Ivory Coast.

Hated secular model

France's strict secular laws which ban the Islamic veil in schools and covering the face in public have outraged Islamic hardliners, according to religious historian Odon Vallet.

"For them France's clear-cut secularism is incompatible with Islam," he added. 

The country's commitment to freedom of speech, which allows unfettered criticism of religion, has also put it in the extremists' crosshairs. 

The deadly attack against the Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015 came out of the assailants' fury at the satirical weekly's controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. 

"France is the country where the debate over Islam" gets the most heated, argued sociologist Raphael Liogier.

But "history is also a hidden reason", Vallet said, pointing out France's "role in the break up of the Ottoman empire" in 1920 which led to the end of the caliphate.

The Sykes-Picot agreement that carved up Iraq and Syria between France and Britain is often cited by the Daesh terror group as the root of the region's problems. 

This "colonial history makes France one of Daesh’s principal enemies”, Vallet added.

Social apartheid

France is home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe, estimated at five million people.

Most are descended from families from the country's former northern African colonies, with which France has a painful shared history, with hundreds of thousands dying during the Algerian war of independence.

Job discrimination has further hampered integration, with some third- and even fourth-generation immigrants claiming they are not made to feel properly French.

Tensions with the police are never far from the surface in some of the rundown suburban housing estates with large immigrant populations, where youth unemployment runs at more than 40 per cent.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls went as far as to talk of "a territorial, social and ethnic apartheid" on some of the estates that exploded into three weeks of rioting in 2005.

Homegrown fighters

As many as 600 French citizens have rallied to the Daesh flag in Iraq and Syria as well as many French-speaking Tunisians and Moroccans.

Returning fighters "can slip very easily into the country", said Patrick Calvar, head of the French domestic intelligence agency. "There are multiple targets and the terrorists can strike at the easy ones." 

The suspected mastermind of the November 13 attacks in Paris, the Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is one such returning fighter. He first came to notoriety in Syria filming Daesh atrocities there.

Weakened government

Just as security experts say France is the Western country most at threat from attack, the authority of its Socialist government is wavering as a 2017 presidential election looms.

Francois Hollande is one of the most unpopular French presidents on record and, as in other European countries, the far-right is on the rise.

Extremist attacks, which are designed to divide and polarise, have added to the febrile atmosphere with polls putting the far-right ahead in the first round of the presidential vote.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, rose to power riding on brash populism. A former professional soccer player and ex-mayor of Istanbul, he engineered electoral landslides for a party whose pious Muslim base flouted the old secular establishment. In office for more than a decade, he has been increasingly accused of autocratic tendencies.

The failed coup attempt against him appears to have only invigorated his leadership, at least in the short term.

Erdogan suffered setbacks in the past. He was forced out of his Istanbul mayor’s post and spent four months in jail in 1999 for reading an Islamic poem that angered the staunchly secular courts of the time. But that experience only seemed to burnish his credentials as a man of the people.

He became prime minister in 2003, championing the idea of Turkey as a role model for democratic rule in Muslim countries and spurring its bid to join the European Union, a campaign that has since foundered. Over time, though, some Turks became increasingly concerned about alleged efforts by Erdogan to impose Islam on Turkish life and crackdowns on perceived opponents that raised worries about human rights backsliding and infringements on free expression.

While the coup attempt was under way, Erdogan broadcast a message of defiance from the FaceTime app on an iPhone — a tactic that later drew bemused commentary from Turks who recalled past government efforts to restrict YouTube and other social media platforms.

These days, Erdogan’s critics draw comparisons with the strongman tactics of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader who died in 2013. Notably, a 2002 coup briefly removed Chavez but in the end only made him stronger when he returned to power, in part because it discredited his foes.

For the moment, Erdogan is riding high on public outrage over the coup attempt. He has vowed that its plotters will pay a heavy price, raising the possibility of military purges.

“He comes out of this tremendously strengthened,” said Howard Eissenstat, associate professor of Middle East history at St Lawrence University in Canton, New York.

“This has remobilised a base that was getting sort of tired of him. It gave him at least a moment in which he unified all elements of society against a clear threat,” Eissenstat said.

Turkey has long been guided by strongman cults. There were centuries of Ottoman imperial rulers; then Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the national founder who imposed an unrelenting vision of secularism that benefited like-minded elites; and the military, quick to stage coups in the past when unhappy with civilian leadership.

On Erdogan’s early watch, the economy grew and diplomats confidently fanned out across the region. But the early successes have faded somewhat as fallout from regional conflicts, including the arrival of several million refugees fleeing war in Syria, and a breakdown in peace talks with Kurdish rebels weighed on Turkey’s fortunes.

Erdogan, who switched from prime minister to president in 2014, has pushed for constitutional changes that would give him more power. His supporters have linked his legacy to plans for the centenary of Turkey’s national founding in 2023, suggesting he has ambitions to stay in power at least until then.