PARIS: President Francois Hollande said Tuesday he was willing to extend France's state of emergency for another six months following the Bastille Day massacre, as lawmakers prepared to debate the country's tough security laws.
French MPs will mull a fourth extension of the eight-month-old state of emergency, as criticism mounted of the Socialist government's response to a slew of extremist attacks.
"We are up against challenges and that of terrorism is without doubt one of the largest ones," said Hollande, using a visit to Portugal to urge the whole of Europe to make defence an absolute priority.
Hollande had only last Thursday announced a planned lifting of the measures imposed after the Paris attacks that killed 130 in November.
But he changed tack hours later after a truck driver ploughed through a crowd leaving a July 14 fireworks display in Nice, killing 84 people.
Hollande initially proposed a three-month extension but said Tuesday he was "open to a further extension of three months", making a total of six months.
His remarks were seen as a concession to opposition Republicans who have demanded that the state of emergency -- which gives the police extra powers to carry out searches and place people under house arrest -- be maintained through to the end of the year.
With elections due next year, the political unity seen after last year's attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has evaporated.
The Socialists have said they will draw the line at some of the opposition's more controversial demands.
Republicans leader and former president Nicolas Sarkozy, eyeing another run for the top job next year, has called for anyone showing signs of being radicalised to be forced to wear an electronic tag, placed under house arrest or kept in a detention centre.
"We can't lock people up on the basis of mere suspicion, or suspicion of suspicion," minister for parliamentary relations Jean-Marie Le Guen retorted Tuesday.
- 'Very violent images' -
The Paris prosecutor's office said Tuesday that all 84 victims of the Nice massacre had finally been identified. Around 30 were Muslims, said an official from a regional representative body. Almost half were foreigners.
Five days after the attack, 70 people remain hospitalised, 19 in critical condition.
On Monday, investigators said 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who used a 19-tonne truck to mow the victims down, had shown "recent interest" in militant activity.
Authorities found "very violent" photos on his computer, of corpses, fighters posing with the IS flag and photos of Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
However, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said there was no direct evidence of the Tunisian's links to the Islamic State group (IS) -- which has claimed him as one of their "fighters."
- Mass hotel cancellations -
The attack has hit tourism hard on the Cote d'Azur, where Nice -- France's second most-visited city after Paris -- is situated.
In Extenso tourism consultancy said hotel cancellation rates were running at 20-40 percent.
The aftershocks are being felt in the capital also, where the director of the luxury Plaza Athenee hotel told AFP the phone had been "ringing off the hook with cancellations for July, August and September".
Molins said IS's call for supporters to strike targets in France had emboldened some people to act "without needing to go to Syria and without precise orders".
- Psychotic tendencies -
Bouhlel had a history of violence, with a doctor he consulted in Tunisia as a youth diagnosing psychotic tendencies.
In March, he received a suspended sentence for armed assault after beating a driver with a nail-studded plank in an episode of road rage.
He showed no interest in religion until recently, Molins said, with acquaintances telling people he "ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had an unbridled sexual activity".
But earlier this month, he stopped shaving his beard for what he dubbed "religious" purposes.
Six people are still being held over the attacks, including a 38-year-old Albanian suspected of providing Bouhlel with a pistol he used to fire at the police who shot him dead.
In a sign of the mounting frustration over a string of extremists bombings, shootings and stabbings that have killed over 230 people in 18 months, Prime Minister Manuel Valls was booed and heckled on Monday at a remembrance ceremony in Nice.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says the government has bolstered security notably by sending thousands of troops into the streets.
But "there is no zero risk," Cazeneuve warned.
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