AKIPRESS.COM - A truck loaded with weapons and hand grenades drove onto a sidewalk for more than two kilometers, plowing through Bastille Day revelers who’d gathered to watch fireworks in the French resort city of Nice late Thursday. At least 80 people were killed before police killed the driver, Vancouver Sun reports referring to authorities.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says 80 people have died in the truck attack on the seaside avenue of Nice, and 18 people are in critical condition.

Numerous others have been wounded, he said after traveling to the scene.

“The identification of the criminal is in progress,” he said, refusing to confirm reports that an ID card was found after police shot the truck driver dead.

“We are in a war with terrorists who want to strike us at any price and in a very violent way,” the minister said.

In a defiant speech, French President François Hollande said “the terrorist character” of the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice “cannot be denied.”

Hollande confirmed that some children were among the dead when the truck drove through the crowds.

Nice prosecutor Jean-Michel Prêtre described a horrific scene, with bodies strewn about along the roadway and Sylvie Toffin, a press officer with the local prefecture, said the truck ran over people on a “long trip” down the sidewalk near Nice’s Palais de la Méditerranée, a building that fronts the beach.

Wassim Bouhlel, a Nice native who spoke to the AP nearby, said that he saw a truck drive into the crowd. “There was carnage on the road,” he said. “Bodies everywhere.”

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for “murder, attempted murder in an organized group linked to a terrorist enterprise.”

The ranking politician of the Alpes-Maritime department that includes Nice said the truck plowed into the crowd over a distance of 2 kilometers. Many of those on the ground were in shorts and other summer clothing.

Eric Ciotti said on BFM TV that police killed the driver “apparently after an exchange of gunfire.”

The president of the Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur regional council, which includes Nice, said the truck was loaded with arms and grenades. Christian Estrosi told BFM TV that “the driver fired on the crowd, according to the police who killed him.”

Bouhlel said he witnessed the man emerge with a gun and start shooting.

Images being broadcast across French media showed revelers running for their lives down Nice’s palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais, the famous seaside boulevard named for the English aristocrats who proposed its construction in the 19th century.

Video footage showed men and women – one or two pushing strollers – racing to get away from the scenes. And, in what appeared to be evidence of a gun battle, photos showed a truck with at least half a dozen bullet holes punched through its windshield.

It was not immediately clear who would have been behind an attack, but France has recently seen a spate of dramatic assaults from by jihadist groups.