observing this fact. you don't need any special training to do this. this is something you can do very easily. >> some isis supporters celebrating online right now in social media. we're going to stay on top of this story. i'm wolf blitzer in "the situation room." our breaking news coverage continues right now with erin burnett "out front." this is cnn breaking news. good evening. i'm erin burnett. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. we are following breaking news out of france. an attack that has left at least 60 dead. those numbers are climbing by the moment here. 60 dead. at the latest, we understand, at least 100 more injured according to sources. a french official tonight calling this a major attack. a box truck plowing into a crowd of people in the resort city of nice on the french riviera. panic in the street, the crowd was celebrating the french holiday of bastille day.

a witness telling cnn the driver accelerated as he hit the crowd. after the crowd was hit the man got out of the truck and then opened fire on the pedestrians with a gun. a photographer captured a terrible scene. i want to warn you the image we're about to show you is extremely disturbing. it shows you the extent of the horror that is happening in france right now. those are bodies strewn across the street of some of the people that this man killed and murdered in this heinous attack. authorities right now warning residents to stay in their homes. officials say the driver of that truck was shot and killed at this time and that is the latest that we know. that an extremely developing story at this moment. president obama has been briefed about the ongoing situation. the president of france has return to the paris. nice is located in the south of france about 250 miles south of the capital. becky anderson is live there. becky, what are officials saying right now about this heinous attack? >> well, there were thousands of

people in the promenade des anglais, to our viewers who have been to the south of france they will know that is the main drag along the beach in what is a very busy city in the south of france, celebrating bastille day, this being the 14th of july, celebrating more than 230-odd years since the revolution. many people on the streets and this carnage happening, it's remarkable really that we're even reporting on this. affiliates now suggesting as you point out as many as 60 dead and more than a hundred injured. the french president and the french prime minister are on their way back to paris for a crisis meeting at the interior ministry and as you rightly pointed out, erin, this is the result of a lorry.

a lorry driving some 100, 150 meter along the promenade des anglais plowing as one witness suggested, through the crowd and striking those in its midst and the driver of that lorry then opening fire with an assault rifle. we do understand from our sources that driver of the truck was shot and killed. it is still unclear whether there is anybody else involved in what they are calling an attack, and i have to say that early reports suggested that police sources here describing this as appearing to be a terror attack, but lately in the past, what? 30 minutes or so, this being described as an attack. not necessarily using the words of terror, but it is certainly

being described as an attack and if one considers that this is now, what? an hour into a very, very chaotic and tragic situation, it's very unclear from authorities exactly what came to pass and who the assailant was who was involved in this, but we do know, as our affiliates are reporting that more than 60 dead at this point and a more than 100 injured on the promenade des anglais in a very busy part, a very busy city in the south of france, this the 14th of july. erin? >> thank you very much, becky. as the story is developing, i want to go to someone who was there. eric tretell, an american lawyer visiting nice with his wife. eric, i am so sorry you were there. i know your wife was injured as people were trying to run. what did you see?

>> we were having dinner at a restaurant which is about three meters below the promenade, at beach level of the promenade -- fireworks. and we were -- >> you know, we're losing -- go ahead. >> all of a sudden we heard, pop, pop, pop -- i don't know how many and incredibly, my wife recognized it as gun fire. >> we are having a little bit of interruption on that line and we'll try to getteric back. as you can imagine given the chaotic situation on the ground in nice it is incredibly difficult to get the cell phone connections because of the emergency crews trying to deal with this situation. as we said, the death toll climb doing 60 and it has been going up and at least 100 others injured and jim sciutto has been covering the story from the beginning and jim had a chance

to talk to a witness who was only 15 feet away when this truck driver came in in this horrible attack and what were you able to learn? >> reporter: that's right. i spoke to an american pilot who was in the midst of the crowd, he was 15 feet away as this truck plowed into the crowd and sadly, he described how intentional this was. he told me that the truck driver was mowing bodies over and accelerating as he was sitting hitting these people in the streets. i spoke to another witness that said these streets were blocked off. there were no vehicles meant to be there. these were pedestrian avenues at the peak of the fireworks for what is in effect france's celebration, bastille day. he intentionally broke through the cordons and intentionally accelerated as he was driving through the crowd and again, accelerating as he hit people, clearly intentional. i spoke to other witnesses who then heard gun fire after that -- those initial crashes

through the crowd, but what was not clear from their perspective was the gun fire coming from the truck and police. we now know that police fired on and killed this driver in the cab of that truck after this horrible thing happened, and speaking to the witnesses, as well, they just described the sound as the truck was going through there and the panic and just a sad day for the people who were there and a sad day for france. >> jim, we now understand the numbers, as i said, tragically have been going higher. 73 now dead in this -- in this terror attack. obviously, we're not using the word terror yet and it was terror by any definition of what the term means and in terms of the motive i know we do not yet know at this point authorities are clearly using that word attack. what more are they able to figure out, jim, from what happened in terms of the motive. >> they're not concluding anything yet, but let's look at precedent here, erin. first of all, a car is a deadly

weapon and a truck is a deadly weapon and we know these groups have been encouraging using the trucks as deadly weapons and we've heard al adnani saying run them over. we've seen them in canada, we've seen them in israel and france before, several times before, but not to this degree. not with this level of carnage. obviously, this is a bigger vehicle, a truck and nearly a tractor trailer size, immense crowds packed together there making it an even more deadly weapon than it would be. whether this is islamist or terrorist, it appears very much to be intentional so an act of mass murder at a minimum. >> all right. jim's going to stay with us, and i do want everyone to understand here the death toll going up to 73. 32 people were massacred in brussels and 130 in paris and this is 73 people in this attack. at least 100 injured. 73 dead now formally according to french television. tony molina is an american from

san diego and he saw what happened and he joins me on the phone. tony, we are glad that you are all right and you are here and able to talk about this. can you tell me what you saw? >> sure. basically, we had a large fireworks show tonight. we overlook an area of the beach where there was a lot of people sitting to watch the show. we are watching it ourselves and when it ended, the streets were just flooded, basically. there is a large boardwalk in front of us here that's -- that was just filled with people and basically about five minutes after the show we had stepped inside and we just started hearing what sounded like thumps and people yelling and screaming. so my son and i ran out to the balcony to see what was going on, this was, unfortunately, right when this white panel truck was going right across the area in front of us, and it was

zig-zagging. i'd say it was going about 25 to 30 miles an hour as it did so and just plummeting through. >> it looked like it was hitting several people. i can tell you right now even as i look out in front of our area i still see about ten covered bodies that they haven't even begun processing yet. >> i mean, it's just horrible. you now even can see that there are bodies they have been able to cover, but they haven't been able to move them or take them to the morgue or anything, tony. >> yeah. it was -- it was -- i think it was a shock for everybody down there. in fact, all day long we've seen several law enforcement, military all through this whole area of the promenade des anglais, but at this particular time i think they had either cleared to other locations or were doing some other sort of traffic enforcement or something because there was only a couple out here in this area in front

of our place and everyone was just in shock because the bodies that were hit -- they were just laying there and everyone was kind of running off in different direction, and i think i saw -- i can't tell if it was an officer or not, depending -- based on the uniform that i saw from this distance, he just looked confused, as well. i can only imagine what he was going through at the time. >> so, tony, when you were watching this and you say what you describe as a white panel truck and you say it was zig-zagging, was it -- could you tell, was it accelerating? they're using the word attack and it's clear this was purposeful, but what did you see from the way it was moving and the way it was aiming? what did you see? >> my first thought was my gosh, this must be a drunk driver. i didn't think it was an act of terror initially. i just came out and saw people yelling and this truck driving kind of erratically, but as we watched it unfold it was

never -- it never, you know, came to a stop or anything. it just kept kind of zig-zagg g zig-zagging. i wouldn't say it was accelerating, per se, but it kept a fairly continuous speed as it kind of went through this crowd here. >> and -- and you were -- you are there right now with your 14-year-old son, right? both were together during this? >> yeah. yeah, well, my -- me, my wife and my son are here. we had all stepped inside after the fireworks, and i think my wife had walked back to the bedroom so my son and i were sitting here in the room that's right next to the patio and that's when we heard the noises and both my son and i just walked out. i wish he hadn't have seen it, but basically we both came out and we saw this truck basically go through people. >> and did you see the shooting? we're trying to understand at this point who was chuting at whom. one eyewitness said the driver was shooting and someone else

said maybe not the driver. the driver was shot out. were you able to see anything to indicate that, tony? >> no. we could hear the shooting, but just to give you an idea of where we're at, one of the famous landmarks here is the negrasco hotel and we are west of that, closer in the direction of the airport here so we are just west of that, probably about 70 yards from that hotel and the panel truck had continued on. so the area when it went in front of us was actually on the boardwalk. so the sidewalk area where everyone should feel safe to walk, and it just continued on that until it got to the front of the negresco where there is a pergola and it turned from there and went on to the street at that point, but the streets at that time were still flooded with people, with pedestrians. so it continued on past the

negresco hotel and we lost sight of it due to the trees that are lined in the middle of the roadway and then we just heard gunshots several seconds later so i couldn't tell you from where i'm at where that even ended up. >> and tony, before you go, and i know it's exhausting for you to have to relive what you're watching and you're still looking down there at people who have died who are still not taken to where they need to go, how long did this happen? when you started to see that truck driving, the white panel truck, how long did it drive before this stopped? how far did it go? >> i would say from where we're at it probably continued another maybe half a mile and it had to have come from at least a half mile from the other direction, at least. >> well, tony, i very much appreciate your time. thank you so much for calling -- calling in and speaking to us.

tony, american from san diego visiting nice with his family. i want to go to our justice correspondent evan perez and you heard from what he said from this perspective as a witness, it seems it drove from where we could see and it started hitting people half a mile zig-zagging going 25 to 30 miles an hour and as we hear about this horror and chaos, he's saying there are at least ten people that he can see from his room right now, they are covered and people who were murdered in this horrible attack. what are you learning? >> well, erin, one of the thing u.s. officials are doing is they're keeping an eye on social media especially of these extremists online who are celebrating what happened in nice. we've already seen some of those tweets and other postings on social media. it's not clear whether or not this is an isis attack or some other group, but certainly isis is the first suspect, the first group that comes to mind certainly for u.s. officials as they watch this and obviously

france has a tremendous problem. we know obviously with the terrorist attack in paris and also the cha"charlie hebdo" att and just last week was the completion of the month-long euro 2016 soccer tournament during which time there was this very heightened concern about a terrorist attack in france. they managed to get through without any major incident, but certainly bastille day, a very symbolic day, was a day of big concern, and if you hear from some of the witnesses they talked to they say they saw very heavily armed police there. this was a promenade that was cordoned off so this truck would have had to go through some kind of barricade to be able to get into this promenade and mow down these people. the death toll is very high right now. u.s. officials are working to see if there's any information they can collect and there are communications especially in that region that the u.s. intelligence agencies are now

going through, erin, just in case there might be any clues as to what might have been coming and perhaps someone might have said something that they were about to carry out an attack and these are the types of things that the u.s. analysts are doing and they'll spend the night doing tonight. erin, thank you very much. >> stay on the phone with us and he'll be back with us momentarily. i want to bring in our intel jen security an late bob baer and former assistant director with the u.s. marshals mark roderick. bastille day, this is the july fourth of france and we now know 73 people have been slaughtered in this attack. is there any doubt in your mind this was a terror attack? >> oh, i think almost definitely. it's rare these personal attacks occur in paris and considering it was the 14th of july, a machine gun was used, mass slaughter, france was on high alert and the head of the bataclan attack is loose, you

know? so many things that suggest the islamic state. we're going to find out later from the french, but right now if i had to make a guess it would be the islamic state. >> and art, i want to show everyone what we have just gotten in here. we're going to show you. it is graphic and it is disturbing, but we were just hearing a witness talk about this who saw this. this was the truck actually plowing through the crowd and you can see how many people are there and you can see how crowded and densely packed those streets are and that truck going through and tony molina, that truck going 25, 30 miles an hour and it makes you choke up how fast it seems to be going through the people. what is your sense of what happened here? >> i agree with bob. i know the french government hasn't officially come out and called it a terror attack, but it seems like all of the earmarks are there. the thing that struck me when i first heard about it is that this particular attack doesn't seem to be that very sophisticated as we saw with

"charlie hebdo" and as we saw with the paris attacks and as we saw with the belgium attacks and what i mean by that is there wasn't multiple people involved that we know of right now. we have one driver of a vehicle that was neutralized, but we do have an automatic weapon, it appear, but we don't have other conspirators that were with him in the vehicle. there's no explosives. this could have been either inspired or directed. i'm thinking more along the lines of a lone wolf-type incident who just had a target of opportunity here and when you see that van moving through there, that's like a small tank and we saw the photos of the bullet holes in the front of it and what it took to stop that vehicle before the individual got out and engaged with police. >> paul cruickshank is also with me, our terror analyst. paul, you and i have obviously been together in paris and brussels. when you hear how art drives this as a small tank driving through that crowd that it took

so many bullets for them to stop it. as you see this truck moving here, this shows someone with clear intent. there is no question here that this is a drunk driver or anything like that. that at this point seems to be a ridiculous proposition. >> clear intent, mowing people down and plowing through them with this truck and according to some reports and two kilometers according to this along this boardwalk. the french police responding by killing the truck driver clearly believing that this was not just a runaway truck, but an actual attack that was taking place and one of the leaders of isis, abu muhammad al adnani has called on followers in the west and also in france to run people over with their car. he first made that call in september 2014 and just a few weeks later there was an attack in canada, in quebec where an

extremist who was inspired by isis rammed his car into a canadian soldier killing one in a terrible attack in canada, but this on a much larger scale. the symbolism of the day, and the fact that this is the french national day, july 14, bastille day, makes one think this could well be terrorism as well as all of the details we're hearing from eyewitnesses pouring in this evening. >> all right. all of you, please stay with me as we're standing by here and getting more information. jimmy gasol joins me on the phone. he's on vacation with his family in nice and he was with his family, his wife and children, watching the fireworks and please, jimmy, what did you see happen? >> well, after the fireworks were done, you know, people were just gathered on the sidewalks

and just watching live bands and there was music and everything was really good and then we heard loud voices and loud noises and voices and people screaming and then gun fire. people started running in different directions, and then i saw a big white truck going through the pedestrian -- the pedestrian designated area because they are blocked so that cars wouldn't go through and then, you know, more gun fire and more people were screaming and running in different directions. >> as you saw that truck, it seems like it was moving very quickly and obviously with intent. it was going fast. what did you see? >> well, it seemed to me like it was moving in a steady speed and

not very quickly, but you know, just -- it just cut through the barricades and over the roadblock and it kept going through, you know, for a good, you know, kilometer or two kilometers or so in a non-stop kind of speed moving forward. and it was a really big truck. it was a, you know, like a garbage truck. >> a big truck. i know you and your family, thank goodness arejimmy. i know you and your wife were in separate locations and you have been able to locate them and everyone is safe in your family and we are hearing that this

death toll keeps climbing and it is 73 and it is going higher and there are still bodies in the streets and what did you see as the truck was going through the crowd? what was happening as people were trying to run away from it in that street where they were so tightly packed? >> you know, from my location, i wasn't seeing the truck actually running over people, you know? we could not even assume that was happening and we're assuming that the truck was passing by and shooting at people and we were trying to shelter ourselves and my wife and kids were actually -- my wife was taking the kids to sleep. she was actually nearer to the location where the truck started hitting the people so we were separated for a good one minute before the whole thing started and she was right there with the kids and they were -- they started running towards the narrower streets inside.

>> jimmy, thank you very much. i am so glad for you and your wife and i know you are so grateful your children are safe tonight. thank you. >> of course. our thoughts are with the people who have lost their lives, you know and their families. i hope the injured, you know, recover well. >> yes. and i do want everyone to understand we do have some new breaking news coming in at this moment. as i said, 73 people now confirmed dead and we have learned much more about this attack. it started, the occupant of the truck actually started shooting into the crowd. that started first and then the truck drove about two kilometers along the pavement of that main boulevard that they were on in the pedestrian area driving along, hitting people on the way. that death toll now 73, 100 injured and they can tell us now what is inside that white panelled truck. we understand firearms, explosives and grenades all found inside the truck.

obviously, that is a very significant development here in this, i think, fair to call this now a terror attack in france. bob baer back with me, art robert and bob baer, this development makes this pretty clear. >> it's pretty clear, and i think it's organized, as well. you don't buy explosives in france on the black market easily. you need a network. you need to know what you're doing and same thing with an automatic weapon. this attack for me was well planned on the promenade of des anglais is packed with people and you get the most people killed with an attack like this and of course, that is the intent of the islamic state is kill as many people in the west as they can, and the french, again, have been on high alert. they've been unable to roll up all these networks that were involved in paris and brussels. so this didn't come as a surprise to the french and the other thing, i have to say, is protecting against these attacks with a truck are almost

impossible. >> right. >> you take fifth avenue, same thing. >> anywhere in the world, it's almost impossible and the islamic state, as we know, is a particularly bloody, awful organization that doesn't have any sensible, political goals. >> and evan perez with this breaking news, i know as you're learning more here, they are reporting what they found inside this truck and there appears to be some sort of an arsenal. >> it could have been each move deadly than it was, erin. i'm talking to officials here in the united states and one of the things they are trying to figure out is who could be behind this and what we always find and we don't know the name of the attacker at this point and they're still trying to get that information from their french colleague, but we've seen this time and time again and almost always these attackers are known to french authorities. they are on some kind of radar. they've had some kind of contact previously. a lot of them, it's very

difficult for the french to keep tabs on the numbers of people that we're talking about, they're having very big extremist problem and we're talking about the south of france which we think of it as vacation land, but it is also home to a very large population with a very large problem that they have with extremists and some of whom have traveled to syria and iraq and have now come back, and they're obviously listening to the encouragement of isis which is telling them that they need to carry out attacks. we know just in the last couple of days the french government announced that they were going to send back an aircraft carrier which was used to conduct some of the operations and some of the attacks that were carrying out, the coalition was carrying out against isis in syria and we know that there is a lot of anger among isis supporters about that and the fact that the french are still carrying out and still assisting in some of these attacks in syria. >> art, with this breaking news and this time line significant when you hear witnesses talking

about, this was a heavy police presence and this was cordoned off and the time line that we're learning according to the regional president telling the bfmtv, he started by shooting into the crowd and started driving through the crowd killing people and this was all able to happen. obviously, this could have been significantly worse. we're finding out there were firearms and explosives and grenades in the back of that truck and this did go on for a period of time before they were able to stop this driver with gun fire. >> exactly. now that we know that there's explosives in the back as bob had mentioned, now we can track where those explosives came from and the hand grenades. it's just very, very luck they this individual was not able to ignite those explosives in the back of the van because that would have been the death toll would have been in the hundreds

if not the thousands at this particular point in time. the clearance for that particular vehicle, and we don't know how much was in the back of that van and that was a pretty big vehicle and if it was filled that would have left quite a crater and a lot more, a lot higher body count. >> bob baer, in a sense it seems that police when they shot the truck they were able to disable the driver and stop them moving and should they have gone awry, there could have been an explosion caused even by that. >> it depends on the explosive. if it was a homemade explosive it could have gone off. if it was a military explosive it wouldn't have. the french are good and the police are good and i know they've come under criticism, but again, this was inevitable. who are these people getting all of these explosives and especially grenades? are they coming from libya?

you cannot buy these in france. and how well armed are they and europe is in full panic at this point independent. >> all right. all of you stay with me. i want to break and go to jim sciutto with more breaking news. what are you learning? >> erin, i've been speaking to eyewitnesses for some time now and what they had described as it was happening was just how long this driver was able to drive through that crowd. when i say long, not just in time, but in distance. >> yeah. >> it appears for more than a mile, and that obviously allowed him to kill so many people and one way witnesses telling me they're seeing that right now is that they see ambulances spread along that waterfront there for more than a mile taking care of the injured, sadly, and taking care of the dead, as well, and that's something that's going to be part of this investigation. how did this driver manage to get through cordons that were intended to keep cars, all cars

and drivers off this street which have become a pedestrian avenue and then, two, how did the driver manage to drive for so long through there without being successfully challenged. >> and that is the crucial question. bob baer, let me bring you in on that. jim's reporting here that it was more than a mile. we had a witness say a similar thing that it was a mile that he was driving at 25 to 30 miles an hour and others said it was a little bit slower, but still you are talking about quite some time and it started with gunshots before the driving even. >> what that tells me is special forces tactics, speed, surprise and the attack and everyone is thrown off guard so quickly and even the police and then you just run through people and it's not like the police were aware it was even coming. even if they had cops in the crowd and they don't have

automatic weapons and trucks are particularly lethal. they started in beirut in the early '80s. >> so this sounds like what you're saying and paul cruickshank has talked about how isis has told people whether inspired by isis and isis operatives too use cars to run people over. it sounds like what you're saying this is more than just someone who was inspired to do that. it sounds like this person had some sort of training or preparation it appears from what we're seeing now? >> it does, and we're going to learn more and i could be absolutely wrong about this, but if it's a normal psychopath they'll run a couple of people over in the street like in canada, but this person was well prepared. he was steeled to do this. it's not easy to attack somebody with a truck and kill so many people. you have to have planning and of course, i go back to all of the explosives and that requires an organization and even if it was a lone attack or i would still bet at this point the islamic

state, some sort of cell was behind it. >> paul cruickshank, let me bring you in here in terms of the preparation here. again, the graphic footage we have just received to give people a sense of what happened on the streets of nice in southern france, a truck which we now have footage of driving through at what appears to be -- when you watch the video, a very fast speed just as you can see it go right by. you hear bob baer saying when you look at it going a mile and going through this crowd that this is somebody that appears to have had some sort of training? >> there appears probably to be some kind of network behind this and i agree with bob on that on the fact that you had firearms, explosives, grenades found in the back of the truck. difficult for just one individual to find all these things suggestive of some kind of network behind him, and of course, that raises the possibility of more attacks from

whatever network may have been responsible for this. no claim of responsibility yet from any terrorist group. isis has been silent, but a lot of its supporters have erupted on social media in celebration as you might obviously expect. this part of france, there is, actually, a very beautiful, touristy part of france. they've had a radicalization problem in this area of the french riviera. we've seen some plots in the last couple of years and this has sort of been a long time coming. >> i just want to make sure everyone understands exactly where we stand right now with this reporting with the breaking news coming in and just a moment ago. we now understand that this began according to the president of the region here in france with the driver of this truck opening fire and then driving through the crowd by all accounts now it seems to have been two kilometers, somewhere

close to about a mile going through and at the end when they were able to stop the truck by shooting at the driver from the front of the truck as you can see from the bullet holes and they found firearms, explosives and grenades and this is the very latest that we understand right now. the driver of that truck has been shot dead. the death toll right now, 73. at least 100 injured. a death toll that has been climbing over the past hour. ryan hubs is an american who lives in london and is in nice visiting on vacation. ryan, what did you see? >> well, i was having dinner across the street from the waterfront where this happened and you know, the firework his gone on in celebration of the french holiday and everything was at a standstill and we saw a truck come by on the other side of the road at a pretty high rate of speed and it looked like probably 20, 30 miles an hour and about that time you started to see people running, screaming, rushing away from the

waterfront where everything was happening, and it was initially it sounded like maybe there were bangs coming from the truck and initially thought perhaps that was gun fire, but i think in retrospect it was probably the sound of the truck actually hitting civilians that were out on the waterway, on the waterfront. >> i mean, ryan, how long did it take for you to realize that this was purposeful? that something was going horribly wrong? well, it was pretty obvious immediately that something was going pretty horribly wrong, but in terms of it being purposeful and after a few minutes went back across the street to the waterfront to see what had happened and if there was anything we can do to help and at that point it became obvious that this warrasn't something t just happened close to where we were, but was actually -- it had gone on for -- as far as you

could really see up the beach front and there were numerous bodies and casualties of people that had been covered up indicating that they were gone, and walked just up the waterfront to see what was happening and if there was anything that could be done to help, and it was the same scene, really, as far as you can see up the beach with people that have been killed lying there and emergency services were doing everything they could and were overstretched to deal with this. there were people doing whatever they could and trying to cope, but it was a very traumatic situation for everybody. we ran into people that had lost multiple family members that were there in shock and not knowing what to do, and really just waiting for the authorities to come, and they did, but it was the scale of it was such that it just took a long time for things to really -- to

really be handled. so -- >> you said you ran into people who lost family members and it is impossible to imagine you're celebrating and you're going through what's a joyful moment of fireworks and something like this happens and it's impossible to com pro henned for anybody trying to understand this. when you saw that truck, ryan, was it driving -- did you see the driver at all? did you have any glimpse of him or what he was doing or how he looked or was it too far away? >> you know, it wasn't that far away. it was probably, i don't know, 20 yards away, but it just happened very quickly and everyone's attention was on the fireworks and it kind of registered kind of quickly and then by the time you had gotten a sense of what had happened the truck was further down the road. so, no, i didn't get any sort of glimpse of the driver of the truck. >> ryan, thank you for talking

to us and -- >> yeah. >> thank goodness that you are all right and that your family is all right and thank you again for talking to us. i know you're in a state of shock and fear yourself. so -- becky anderson is back with me now. as we said the breaking news that we are now reporting is that the occupant of the truck started shooting and then driving over a mile, about two kilometers and we had two telling us it was between 20 and 30 miles an hour. they opened a death investigation in terms of the impact of this and it was an act of terror and the question is who caused it? and becky there is a formal investigation. is there new information that they have at this point? >> reporter: no, that's right. you are right to point out that this is clearly a terror investigation and we are being told this is being investigated as murder, and we are hearing

from state radio here that we cannot as yet confirm this that the death toll may have risen to 80 and more than a hundred dead. an incredibly chaotic and tragic situation. you are right to point out that at present this investigation is in the very early stages, and it is unclear as to exactly who the perpetrator was, what his motivation might have been, but this truck, it seems, was full of various equipment including explosives and guns. we have heard that the perpetrator of the attack on the promenade des anglais, the main drag in nice in the southern city was shot and killed by authorities having driven, as you rightly point out some two kilometers through thousands of people in the crowd who were

celebrating bastille day. it is unclear as of yet whether anybody else was likely to have been involved this in this action. authorities only telling thus 3e perpetrator on who he was or who she was or what the motivation might have been. >> becky, thank you very much. >> in the chaos we were talking to eyewitnessnees who are tryin to help the injured on the street and getting people to hospitals. still on the street, one witness talking about taking the white table cloths out of the restaurant and they were running on to the street covering the bodies out of respect. that is the chaos and terror in nice right now. evan perez was speaking to law enforcement sources and has new details at this moment.

what are you learning, aevan. >> reporter: they're treating this as a case of terrorism and that is the going theory as well for authorities. there is a lot of information as to what happened. it does appear from the information they were able to get from their french colleagues that there was only one attacker. the french have been doing a lot of raids and they've been doing arrests and there was a lot of concern during the past month of the euro 2016 soccer tournament, and there might be a terrorist attack and isis threatened they would carry out an attack and they managed to emerge from that period with no major incidents and so one of the things that happened in the last few days and you heard from the french government in the last few days that they were going to relax some of the mrjts law

and they were so many of them that they are trying to keep an eye on in prance and one of the things they were doing is they were going to relax those laws and there was criticism in france about those laws. so it appears that they were relaxing a little bit and they thought they'd gotten over and certainly u.s. officials had been warning that they were expecting something big to happen somewhere in europe, somewhere in france and probably a couple of other places before the summer was over. >> and yet, the scale of what we're seeing here, how this happened and how this has transpired is unprecedented, jim sciutto and we're also looking at a death toll now that is climbing and now 73. >> erin, we have seen mass casualty attacks with automatic weapons and just think as we saw in istanbul recently. we've seen mass casualty attacks with explosives or a combination of the two in istanbul, france and elsewhere. we have seen individual attacks with vehicles before, but we've

never seen a mass casualty attack like this with a driven vehicle. not a truck bomb, not a car bomb, a driven vehicle driven into a crowd and causing so much death with that death toll rising. that part is unprecedented. the scale and the kind of weapon creating this sort of scale, it's another, sadly, weapon in the arsenal. we don't know what kind of group is behind this, but it is a terrorism investigation and whatever kind of terrorist is a new weapon in the arsenal of terrorists and that's, sadly, concerning. >> bob baer, we talk about -- as jim is pointing this out so correctly, a new weapon and yet something that is not new at all. i mean, it's a truck. it was just a truck. yes, it was loaded with explosives, but the explosives didn't even go off. this was just driving. >> well, they just -- they're making sure that they cause casualties. by the way, they watched in israel the damage done to the

israelis, just cars driving through crowds and killing people and it's driven politics to the right and put the population at risk as well as knives. if they can't get the gun, they move to trucks and thai keep on switching tactics. the main thing for them is getting people that are determined to do things like this and there are a lot in france. the french, by the way, have really cracked down over the last year. they've been profiling, going after people and making raids, putting tons of people on things, listening to the phone, but these people are very disciplined and they do not talk on the phone and that's why they can get through and attack something like nice. >> what do you think the intent was here, trying to understand and obviously it's a massive tragedy and a massive casualty event at this time and it could, though, have been even more people dying when you think about the back of this truck and it was full of firearms,es

policives and grenades. we know of only one person, the driver who likely knew how this was going to end as he was driving through the crowd with heavily armed police and what was the plan with the explosives and the grenades in the back of this truck? >> a lot would have been investigated and were these firearms, explosives and the grenades suggest that an even bigger attack might have been planned and for some reason was not able to be carried out. at the moment, we believe there was just one perpetrator, but it's the very early stages at the moment and a very confused situation and not clear if there may have been another person involved. we're just hearing about one person at this point, but the fact that they have this arsenal of weapons and explosives suggest probable i a network behind this in some way, shape or form and very difficult for one individual to source a weapons arsenal like this and

that will give french authorities great concern tonight that there could be follow-on attacks or that there could be others inspired by what they saw that took place over the last several hours. all of the intelligence in france pointing towards isis ratcheting up its attack plans against the country. about a thousand french nationals are traveling to syria and join with the group more than 250 are back in france and they're having to monitor 11,000 individuals in france because of their suspected ties to violence, extremism. this is an unprecedented problem and these sort of things, i'm afraid, are the new normal. >> it's an impossible thing to do to monitor that many people full time. it's just not possible. art, when you hear what we understand now. you hear paul saying there is real concern and there could be a network here and it sounds like there may be. at this point we don't know anything about that. we know only about the driver, but when you hear about what's in the back of that truck, the

firearms and the explosives and the grenades, none of which were used, what do you think? >> i agree. there's definitely a network behind the explosives and if they're military-grade explosives then the french will be able to figure out where they came from. what's really scary about this, as horrible as it is to have 70-plus people dead, this was committed by a single individual that was able to go out there and kill 73 people which is a very high kill rate when you consider what happened in paris, when you consider what happened in belgium, when you consider what happened to "charlie hebdo." that's a lot of people for one person to kill the way he did just driving through that crowd for over a mile. >> i mean, and bob, that's something in paris, the horrific attack, 130 people dead and there was a network and a group

of men involved in carrying that out in bros else and we also know there were multiple people involved, right? they were taking those carts through the airport and there were multiple people and here you are seeing one person so far that we actually, physically saw. >> well, exactly, erin, that's so bad for the french is they've got, you know, they've got a large population that's sympathetic to the islamic state. a lot of converts from christianity have joined the islamic state. it's a problem they can't get a hold of and what worries me is this is going to turn european politics very far to the front and la pen, and the candaidacy for the presidency, it will boost them. it will boost brexit and the germans because it can happen anywhere in europe, but again, i go back to these weapons. are they coming across boats from libya? are they coming from turkey? we simply don't know and what i'm saying is the islamic state,

this is the islamic state attack, we're going to find out soon enough, but that they can keep on going and they have this bottomless, you know, well of adherence, and that's what scares the europeans. >> all right. and i want to go now, we have -- this is going to be some audio. it's very disturbing and i happened everyone to understand as you try to understand what happened in nice tonight, these are from social media images. we have blurred the bodies of the people that have been struck as we could, but we want you to hear -- to hear -- to listen to what you're going to hear right now. [ screaming ]

>> i want to go to evan perez and you have significant breaking news from the fbi. >> erin, i was going to mention, the fbi has been warning about this type of tactic. it's not something that we've seen in the united states to this level, this level obviously of a death toll, but the u.s. has been on guard for these specific types of attacks. it was a bulletin they put out a couple of years ago to law enforcement warning about the possibility of terrorists using these types of attacks here in the united states. there have been a couple of incidents here in north carolina and in california. fortunately, for the u.s., they've not been this level of death toll, but this is something that obviously, there's a lot of security measures that are taken. here in washington, for instance, you can't get very close to the capitol. there are barriers placed specifically because of the concern about trucks being driven into the capitol or other

significant buildings. obviously, soft targets like a crowd gathered for a celebration and this is a boulevard that is normally open to traffic and it's closed off simply because it's bastille day and it's very, very difficult to try to defend against something like this when you have a temporary measure and some barriers to try to prevent cars and trucks from getting into this boulevard, but obviously, no match for somebody intent on doing what they did tonight. >> and let me go back to you, paul cruickshank. this is a method they had been warning about, but as you see here on a time when france is on high alert and i know they've been trying to ratchet some of that back on high alert on the equivalent of bastille day, july fourth, in france. this still happened and in many ways what is so terrifying about it is it seems almost impossible to prevent something like this. >> impossible to prevent.

this is sort of a soft target, if it wasn't on this particular promenade it could be on another one somewhere else in the country. isis are telling their fighters who they're dispatching back to europe telling their followers to kill as many people as they can. their goal in these attacks is to kill as many people as possible, to injure as many people as possible. they want all of this to be in the global headlines for as long as possible. if this is indeed isis, i think we can expect some kind of claim of responsibility fairly soon, but we just don't know at this point whether this is some kind of inspired attack and inspired by the ideology of a terrorist group or by somebody who managed to get to syria and iraq. the fact that there are all these weapons and grenades and explosives found suggests perhaps some kind of network

could have been behind this and this takes you a little bit away from an isis-inspired attack and further on the direction of an isis-directed attack, but this is very, very early stages in the investigation. >> all right. stay with me. i want to bring in alvin makozi with france, the broadcaster there and he is right there on the scene in nice. what are you seeing right now? >> right now, this is only police and they had to go to the hospital because there is nobody here now. and more than 40,000 people coming for the fireworks because it was one of the most important moments of the summer session in the french riviera, and it's

happened at the end of the fireworks when the crowd is very massive with a lot of tourists coming from, for example, from the united states or from england and everybody shut out and everybody ran in different directions. at the end, the van is stopped by the police and the police killed the man. >> and in terms of what you understand right now, i know you're saying 40,000 people came there. do they understand at this point? are they sure how many people were killed in this attack? >> maybe it's too early. the authorities say there is more than 60 people are dead and more than 100 is, and i'm sorry

for my english and at those moments i can say with how many people will stay on the floor. thank you very much, alban, reporting for france tv. and paul cruickshank, the key thing he was able to add, and into the show this hour who were in nice and there on vacation and he's talking about 40,000 people who were at the fireworks displ display. >> a huge fireworks display and this was a big national celebration in france each year. there was a military parade in paris and there was some concern that that could be a target today from intelligence

officials and france is very heavily involved in the war against isis. but -- but -- but by launching this attack in a very crowded area they were able to maximize the casuallies and that's what they were calling for in the west. in the ougautumn of 2010 al qae released "inspire" magazine talking about how to maximize carnage that attackers in the west, in the united states or france should pick up as much speed as possible and to launch their attacks in areas where there were the biggest number of pedestrians possible. they also called on their followers, if they had access to firearms, to carry them with them in their attacks so that they could also carry out shootings during the attacks. a lot of what we're hearing sound like the details of this attack in the south of france is

very, very similar to what al qaeda were urging their followers to do. >> right. >> back in 2010 and isis also urging the same kind of attacks. >> paul cruickshank, thank you. more breaking news. president obama has just rae released a statement and i want to read it to you. on behalf of the american people i strongly condemn in the strongest terms on what appears to be a terrorist attack which wounded dozens of innocent civilians and our thoughts and prayers are with those injured and killed. the president of the united states calling this a terror attack. donald trump responding to the news of the attack in france saying in light of the horrible attack in nice, france, i have postponed the news conference and he offered the job to pence and pence accepted and there was a formal announcement tomorrow and that has been postponed. the latest that we understand right now is that this started

with shooting and driving for over a mile through a crowd. 73 dead as of the latest that we understand right now and more than 100 injured in this terror attack in nice, france. the president of the united states coming out very firmly and calling it a terror attack. we're going to hand our breaking coverage on right now to anderson cooper. it is impossible to say good evening right now because plainly it is not a good evening, not in the southern french city of nice where the death toll has been climbing all night. the images that you will see tonight are alone, they are hard to stomach, and the driver plowing down in nice for anyone who could not get out of the way. [ screaming ] >> mom! [ screaming ]