A witness has told a French news channel he saw the police shoot a man who drove a truck through a crowd on a busy promenade in Nice.
At least 80 people were killed when a man, who has been identified as a 31-year-old Franco-Tunisian, drove a truck down the packed Promenade des Anglais at the end of a Bastille Day fireworks show.
A man, who says his name is Nader, told French news channel BFMTV he and another man yelled at the driver to stop as he drove past.
"He just stopped in front of me, he [drove over] a lot of people in the street, all down the street, I saw a guy in the street, me and him were trying to speak to the driver to tell him to stop," he said.
"He looked to the girl under the car, he smashed her and I didn’t see behind already, but I saw one and he was driving over her and he smashed her all of the way and the guy next to me he pulled her out."
Emergency services assist wounded people the scene where a truck crashed into the crowd during the Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, France. Source: AAP
Nader said until that moment they thought the driver had lost control of the truck.
"He was moving inside and I saw he is holding something like a cell phone," he said.
"‘He will call the ambulance’, this is what I thought, and then I saw him taking out his gun and even though I was still naïve to think maybe someone is attacking him from the other side, until I saw the police.
"He started to shoot the police and in that moment the officers ask me to run because there were guns shooting. He was wearing the blue uniform like the police, he was just nervous, he looked normal."
Nader said he saw the police shoot the driver dead and shine a spotlight inside the truck to check there was no-one else inside.
"In that moment the police officer saw me, he screamed ‘degage, degage’ ['get away, get away']," he said.
"They thought there is a bomb maybe inside the car, this moment I had to run and they ask all the people on the beach, ‘run, run, run’."
Brisbane woman Sophie Sandilands told SBS News she and her family had been watching the Bastille Day fireworks display on the Promenade des Anglais and had walked along it to listen to some music.
"All of a sudden we see thousands of people start running towards us, screaming and hysterical but couldn’t see what had caused it," she told SBS News via a Skype interview.
"So we pretty much only had a couple of seconds to make the decision to stay and essentially get crushed by the crowd or start running with them."
Brisbane woman Sophie Sandilands was on the Promenade des Anglais when a truck drove through the crowd celebrating Bastille Day. Source: SBS News
Ms Sandilands said they started to head back in the direction of their hotel, via the main square near the promenade, when "hundreds of people started running in the other direction, towards us".
"We sort of found a little alleyway and pushed ourselves into, I think it was an apartment building, little foyer, and there was maybe 10 other French people in there," she said.
"We just stayed in there for maybe 10 minutes and we had one of the boys that was in there translated in relatively broken English what had gone on, but he didn’t know. He just said the outside square was fine and it was fine for us to leave."
Ms Sandilands said they made their way back to the hotel and started searching the internet and social media to find out what had happened.
She said it took some 20 minutes until they started to get a picture of what had taken place.
The police had warned them to stay inside, but had not given them any further information, she said.
"If we were at home and we had friends here I think we would be panicked, but I think we had to be practical and we just had to deal with the situation for what it was," Ms Sandilands said.
"Your emotions sort go out the window and it’s a case of ‘move now'. You’ve got one chance to get away from whatever it is and I think that’s all that really kept us focused that.
"I think it will definitely have some ramifications in the future, but in saying that, we didn’t see the truck [hitting] people and we didn’t see the crowd being injured or potentially dead bodies on the ground so to some degree our experience is going to be very different to other people."
