A “hate shrine” of rocks, rubbish and ash has sprung up on the spot where Nice terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was shot by police, as grief turns to anger in France over Islamic terrorism.
For two kilometres (1.2 miles) along Nice’s Promenade des Anglais small clumps of flowers and candles mark the spots where Bouhlel’s 84 victims were mowed down, while thousands of bouquets and teddy bears line the promenade wall, surround trees, and swamp local landmarks.
But at the eastern end of the promenade, completing the story of what happened last Thursday night, another, very different shrine has sprung up.
Grieving locals have piled stones at the point at which Bouhlel was shot dead by police at the end of his murderous run. Locals stop only to spit and flick cigarette butts on it, while others have upended bins full of rubbish over the spot. One person has scrawled “assassin” in red paint on the pavement alongside. Another has written “coward”. A third placed an image of a middle finger with the words “f*ck Daesh [Islamic State]”.
Amid the now familiar outpouring of grief and tweets insisting “love will win”, anger is now starting to break through, as France suffers its twelfth attack in 18 months.
Yesterday the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was booed as he attended a memorial event for the victims in Nice, after he told the people of France that they would have to “learn to live with terrorism”.
His comments were all the more galling as the attack had taken place on Bastille Day, a major national holiday in France marking the launch of the French Revolution which paved the way for the creation of France’s modern secular state.
“This a big trauma,” Rudy Salles, the Deputy Mayor of Nice told TIME. “The first terror attack, okay. The second terror attack, okay. The third terror attack—we want action,” he said.
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