Tag Archives: France

French Middle East peace conference to be postponed: Palestinian official

Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with Palestine President

RAMALLAH/PARIS (Reuters) – France will postpone a proposed Middle East peace conference in Paris to January next year, Voice of Palestine radio reported on Wednesday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refusing to participate and U.S. attendance in doubt.

France has been trying to persuade Netanyahu, who has repeatedly rejected the conference proposal, to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the French capital to try to revive moribund peace talks between the two sides.

Voice of Palestine radio quoted Palestinian Ambassador to France Salman El Herfi as saying that Paris had informed the Palestinians of its delay to the peace conference until January “to make better preparations”.

It said Herfi would meet French officials on Wednesday to discuss the issue and that he had said that if Israel refused to come in January, the international conference would still go ahead, but without the main protagonists.

Asked to comment on the situation, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry replied: “As of now, France has never officially confirmed any date for this conference. We will do so once we have had the results of our talks with all the parties concerned.”

France has repeatedly tried to breathe new life into the peace process this year, holding a preliminary conference in June where the United Nations, European Union, United States and major Arab countries gathered to discuss proposals without the Israelis or Palestinians present.

The plan was to hold a follow-up conference before Christmas with the Israelis and Palestinians involved to see whether the two sides could be brought back to negotiations.

The conference of foreign ministers was aimed at agreeing on a joint statement that would reaffirm the two-state solution on the basis of pre-1967 borders and according to Security Council resolutions, diplomats said.

The Palestinian mission in Paris was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and John Irish; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Ralph Boulton)

France says it has foiled another attack, arresting seven

A French soldier stands guard near Strasbourg's cathedral in Strasbourg, France,

PARIS (Reuters) – France said on Monday it had foiled a terrorist plot and arrested seven people, a year after a state of emergency was imposed to counter a wave of Islamist attacks.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the seven people of French, Moroccan and Afghan origin, aged 29 to 37, were detained on Sunday. One of the detentions followed a tip-off from a foreign government, he said.

Two were arrested in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille and four in Strasbourg in the northeast. Cazeneuve did not say where the seventh was arrested.

“Yesterday, a terrorist act on our soil that was being prepared for a long time was foiled thanks to the work of the DGSI,” Cazeneuve said in a statement, referring to the internal intelligence service.

“The scale of the terrorist threat is enormous and it is not possible to ensure zero risk despite everything we are doing.”

French soldiers patrol past wooden barracks shops during the installation of the traditional Christkindelsmaerik (Christ Child market) near Strasbourg's cathedral in Strasbourg, France,

French soldiers patrol past wooden barracks shops during the installation of the traditional Christkindelsmaerik (Christ Child market) near Strasbourg’s cathedral in Strasbourg, France, November 21, 2016. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

The minister gave no information on the target of the planned attack. The mayor of Strasbourg said it appeared the plot had not concerned his city but rather “the Paris region”.

A source close to the inquiry told Reuters that some of those detained had spent time in the Syria-Iraq region.

Security is a major theme in campaigning ahead of France’s presidential election next spring.

More than 230 people have been killed in attacks on French soil since January, 2015, when Islamist militants killed 17 people in Paris in an attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in coordinated strikes in Paris last November 13.

Islamic State, whose strongholds in Syria and Iraq are being bombed by warplanes from an international coalition including France, has urged followers to continue attacking the country.

Le Parisien newspaper cited a source as having told it the suspects arrested were awaiting a consignment of weapons.

(Reporting by Brian Love, Matthias Blamont and Chine Labbe; Editing by Richard Lough and Andrew Roche)

French foie gras makers worry as bird flu spreads in Europe

Employee holds a duck liver in at a poultry farm in Doazit, Southwestern France,

By Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS (Reuters) – New outbreaks in Europe of a severe strain of bird flu pose a fresh worry for French foie gras producers, already reeling from lost sales last year when the virus emerged in southwestern France.

The run-up to Christmas coincides with peak demand for the delicacy, France’s favorite festive treat, made from duck or goose liver.

Marie-Pierre Pe from foie gras makers group CIFOG, said on Monday that prices could be 10 percent higher this Christmas after the French government’s decision last year to cull all ducks and geese, and halt output for four months, in a bid to contain the virus.

Farmers hope that stricter measures in place at French farms to spare birds from contamination after last year’s crisis will better protect their industry should the current outbreak of the H5N8 strain, already seen in neighboring Germany and Switzerland and other European countries, hit France.

“When I heard about new bird flu cases in Europe, I thought: It can’t be true, the nightmare is not going to start all over again,” Pe told Reuters.

“We did all that is needed to prepare farmers since the start of the year but we are never immune from birds contaminating a farm,” she said.

Producers estimate the freezing of output had cost the industry around 500 million euros ($539 million), including a 270 million euros loss in sales and additional costs for new biosecurity material.

The 25 percent drop in output and higher costs will lead to the rise in prices of foie gras products this year, Pe said.

Sold whole or as a pate, foie gras is considered a gourmet food in Western and Asian cuisine, but the practice of force-feeding has often been criticized as cruel by animal activists.

CIFOG held regular meetings with farmers this year to explain biosecurity measures put in place after the crisis, such as better protecting food and water from wild birds, Pe said. Farmers in southwestern France, the top foie gras producing region, also face stricter rules to avoid contamination between farms, notably through equipment disinfection.

As well as Germany and Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Croatia, have also reported outbreaks of the highly contagious H5N8 bird flu in recent weeks.

No case of bird flu has been found in France so far this time but the country raised surveillance measures on Thursday to keep wild migrating birds from transmitting the virus to farm poultry.

Denmark ordered farmers to keep their poultry indoors on Monday due to the bird flu threat and Germany said it was considering ordering farmers to keep their flocks inside.

(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Year-old Paris attack probe sights new suspect, but mastermind elusive

People mourning outside of Paris attacks

By Chine Labbé

PARIS (Reuters) – French investigators believe they have identified a Belgian militant in Syria as a coordinator of the deadly Islamic State (IS) attack on Paris, but a year on they are still struggling to pinpoint the mastermind.

Just ahead of the Nov. 13 anniversary of an assault that killed 130 people and injured hundreds, victims and relatives of the dead still seek answers. And the only living person believed to be part of the hit-team, now behind bars, refuses to talk.

A painstaking investigation led by an exceptionally large team of six judicial magistrates has inched forward in search of the “remote-controllers” – those who pulled the strings from abroad, at IS bases in Iraq and Syria or elsewhere.

A source close to the investigation told Reuters this week that a new name had been added to the web of militants involved as coordinators – Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old from a Brussels suburb, now believed to be in Syria.

“It’s a very strong suspicion,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are wary of being definitive while the investigation is still under way.”

Atar was jailed in Iraq on arms-trafficking charges before ultimately joining IS ranks in Syria in 2012, and is suspected of playing a key coordination role in the Nov. 13 rampage, but not of being “mastermind in chief”, the source said.

In particular, Atar is suspected of having recruited two Iraqis who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France sports stadium north of the French capital as part of a broader series of assaults in the heart of Paris on Nov. 13 last year.

He is also suspected of being the person to whom other suicide bombers reported before blowing themselves up in further attacks in Belgium that killed 32 on March 22 this year.

SURVIVORS DISSATISFIED WITH PROBE

Atar, the latest addition to France’s suspects list, was identified in a group of photos shown to a militant arrested in Austria. But that advance means little for the survivors of the attacks, in which 90 of the 130 killed were shot or blown up by armed suicide bombers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

“Even if there’s little chance of bringing the attack mastermind to justice, it would be nice to know his name,” said Emmanuel Domenach, who was at the Bataclan when it was attacked.

Sting, a veteran English pop star who has used his celebrity to champion social campaigns such as defense of forest tribes in South America, is scheduled to play on Saturday at the historic venue to mark its post-attack reopening.

Bernard Bajolet, head of France’s foreign intelligence service, told a parliamentary inquiry in May that the orchestrators of the Nov. 13 attack had been identified but declined to name names to protect his sources.

Investigators, however, have yet to make such an identification, another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters, and do not know who Bajolet was referring to.

At one stage, it was assumed that the mastermind of the attacks was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgo-Moroccan killed by elite French police in a spectacular assault on a flat close to Paris a few days after the Nov. 13 killings.

He was subsequently relegated by investigators to a coordinator role like Atar’s.

Three teams took part in the attack – suicide bombers at the Stade de France, gunmen who opened fire on cafes in Paris, and the squad that killed 90 at the Bataclan.

Salah Abdeslam, captured in Belgium after fleeing Paris on the night of the attack and later transferred back to France, is in solitary confinement in a jail on the edge of Paris, but refused to speak at court hearings. He is believed to be the sole survivor of the IS hit team.

The Nov. 13 attacks and subsequent assaults this year have shaken French society.

A state of emergency imposed after the Paris killings was about to be lifted when, on France’s July 14 national holiday, an IS devotee ploughed a truck into a crowd of revelers in the Riviera resort city of Nice, killing 86. About two weeks later, an Islamist slit a priest’s throat in a church in Normandy.

As armed soldiers continue to patrol the Paris landmarks where tourist numbers have thinned, Europe’s largest community of Muslims lives in greater fear of mistrustful neighbors.

Meanwhile the ruling Socialist party has torn itself apart over an abortive attempt to introduce a law stripping people convicted of terrorism of their nationality, and security and immigration promise to be major issues in next year’s presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; writing by Brian Love; editing by Andrew Callus and Mark Heinrich)

China to have world’s largest nuclear capacity in 15 years: WNA

Nuclear Reactor in China

By Jessica Jaganathan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China is set to overtake the United States to have the world’s largest nuclear capacity over the next 10 to 15 years as it races to build new reactors to combat pollution, the World Nuclear Association (WNA) said on Tuesday.

It will overtake France to have the second-highest number of nuclear reactors by 2020, Agneta Rising, the WNA’s director general, said at an annual energy conference in Singapore.

“For China, the air pollution is a major driver,” she said on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week.

In Asia, 134 operable reactors generated 400 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2015, making up 16 percent of global nuclear generation, the WNA said in a report released on Tuesday.

Another 39 reactors comprising 47.4 gigawatts (GW) are currently under construction in Asia, which comprises nearly two-thirds of global reactor construction. China makes up the bulk with 20 reactors under construction.

“There is history in the region, where you have high-skilled people with very good university education and they have been working on research reactors … so I think there is basis of knowledge,” Rising said. “The big driver (in Asia) is to have electricity for people.”

There are also plans for more than 50 reactors comprising more than 50,000 megawatts (MW) in nine new countries in the region, with most planning to have their first nuclear reactors enter operation before 2030, the WNA said.

Bangladesh looks likely to have the first reactor online among these new countries in six years, Rising said, which would also be the first for the country.

However, many southeast Asian countries are pushing back the timeline for new reactors to come online, including Malaysia and Thailand.

“It’s a combination of cost as it’s a large infrastructure and also there needs to be more groups involved in discussions and have transparency in plans,” she said.

New reactor construction is mostly led by industrializing countries which have enjoyed high levels of economic growth with an accompanying increase in energy demand, the WNA said in the report.

Four countries are expected to account for 70 percent of reactors commissioned in the period to 2030, which are China, Russia, India and South Korea.

(Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

France clears ‘Jungle’ migrant camp in Calais, children in limbo

Migrants/refugees with their belongings during evacuation

By Matthias Blamont

CALAIS, France (Reuters) – France began clearing the sprawling “Jungle” migrant camp on Monday as hundreds gave up on their dreams of reaching Britain, a tantalizingly short sea crossing away.

Following sporadic outbreaks of unrest overnight, the migrants chose instead with calm resignation to be relocated in France while their asylum requests are considered.

By lunchtime more than 700 had left the squalid shanty-town outside Calais on France’s northern coast for reception centers across the country. Hundreds more queued outside a hangar, waiting to be processed before the bulldozers move in.

French officials celebrated the peaceful start to yet another attempt to dismantle the camp, which has become a symbol of Europe’s failure to respond to the migration crisis as member states squabble over who should take in those fleeing war and poverty.

But some aid workers warned that the trouble overnight, when some migrants burned toilet blocks and threw stones at riot police in protest at the camp’s closure, indicated tensions could escalate.

“I hope this works out. I’m alone and I just have to study,” said Amadou Diallo from the West African nation of Guinea. “It doesn’t matter where I end up, I don’t really care.”

The Socialist government says it is closing the camp, home to 6,500 migrants, on humanitarian grounds. It plans to relocate them to 450 centers across France.

Many of the migrants are from countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea and had wanted to reach Britain, which is connected to France by a rail tunnel and visible from Calais on a clear day. Some had wished to join up with relatives already there and most had planned to seek work, believing that jobs are more plentiful than in France.

Britain, however, bars most of them on the basis of European Union rules requiring them to seek asylum in the first member states they set foot in.

DESTINATION UNKNOWN

Even as the process began, the fate of about 1,300 unaccompanied child migrants remained uncertain.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urged Britain last week to step up efforts to identify and resettle child migrants. London has given priority to children with family ties and discussions are underway with Paris over who should take in minors with no connections.

Britain’s Home Office said on Monday it had reluctantly agreed to suspend the transfer of more children, on the request of the French authorities.

For now, children will be moved to converted shipping containers at a site on the edge of the Jungle before they are interviewed by French and British immigration officials, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva said.

“It’s cold here,” said one Sudanese teenager who identified himself as Abdallah. “Maybe we’ll be able to leave in a bus later, or next week, for Britain.”

Armed police earlier fanned out across the Jungle as the operation got underway.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that authorities had not needed to use force and that the large police presence at the camp on Monday was just for security.

RAZING THE CAMP

Aid workers went from tent to tent, urging migrants to leave the camp before heavy machinery is rolled in to start the demolition.

The hundreds who volunteered on Monday to move on were each given two destinations to chose from before being bussed to the reception centers. There they will receive medical checks and if they have not already done so, decide whether to apply for asylum.

The far-right National Front party said the government plan would create mini-Calais camps across France.

Officials expect 60 buses to leave the camp on Monday and the government predicts the evacuation will take at least a week.

Many tents and makeshift structures that had housed cafes, bakeries and kiosks lay abandoned. On the side of one wooden shack a message to British Prime Minister Theresa May had been scrawled in spray-paint: “UK government! Nobody is illegal!”

Despite the calm, charity workers expect hundreds will try to stay and cautioned that the mood could change later in the week when work begins on razing the camp.

“There’s a risk that tensions increase in the week because at some point the bulldozers are going to have to come in,” said Fabrice Durieux from the charity Salam.

Others warned that many migrants who remained determined to reach Britain would simply scatter into the surrounding countryside, only to regroup in Calais at a later date.

“Each time they dismantle part of the camp it’s the same thing. You’re going to see them go into hiding and then come back. The battles will continue,” said Christian Salome, president of non-profit group Auberge des Migrants.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva and Kylie MacLellan in London; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Geert De Clercq and David Stamp)

French police stage impromptu protest against violence

French police gather outside a local police station in Paris, France, October 11, 2016, after a Molotov cocktail attack over the weekend near Paris that injured their colleagues.

PARIS (Reuters) – Hundreds of French police officers staged an unauthorized protest overnight in Paris against anti-police violence, driving their vehicles down the Champs Elysee boulevard with sirens and flashing lights.

French security forces are already under immense pressure following a string of deadly Islamist militant attacks in the past 18 months. Police say they face staff and equipment shortages, and are frequently forced to work overtime.

Police unions complained angrily a week ago about the risk of being sent into gang-ridden “no-go zones” after two officers were injured in a petrol bomb attack on their patrol car in notoriously crime-ridden zone 30 km south of Paris.

Local TV channels LCI and BFM TV broadcast interviews with the police officers who said they had decided to organize the protest spontaneously, without official backing of their labor unions. Their job was becoming impossible, the officers, whose identities were concealed, told the television stations.

National police director Jean-Marc Falcone condemned the protest action in a statement on Tuesday.

“Police officers cannot transgress the responsibility their status imposes and which underpins the legitimacy of their police and public service mission as well as the laws of the republic,” Falcone said.

An internal investigation will establish who was responsible, he said.

The government of Socialist President Francois Hollande, who faces presidential and legislative elections in the first quarter of 2017, has started restoring thousands of police posts axed by former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But it has also deployed thousands of police and soldiers in a bid to boost security at sensitive sites such as schools, synagogues and train stations in the wake of militant attacks.

(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Mathieu Rosemain and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Britain, France seek EU condemnation of Russia over Syria

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a news conference following the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit in the western state of Goa, India,

By Robin Emmott

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Britain and France sought to persuade the European Union on Monday to condemn Russia’s devastating air campaign in Syria and impose more sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad’s government, but met resistance from allies worried about alienating Moscow.

After a weekend of U.S.-led diplomacy that failed to find a breakthrough, EU foreign ministers met in Luxembourg to call for an end to the bombing of rebel-held east Aleppo, where 275,000 people are trapped, and to rush humanitarian aid into the city.

“The pressure (on Russia) must be strong,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said. “The more the European Union shows unity and determination, the more we can move forward in what is a moral obligation: to stop the massacre of the population of Aleppo,” he told reporters.

But the bloc is split over strategy towards Russia, its biggest energy supplier, with divisions about how harsh any criticism of Moscow should be and whether there was ground for also putting Russians under sanctions.

Britain and France want to put another 20 Syrians under travel bans and asset freezes, suspecting them of directing attacks on civilians in Aleppo, in addition to the EU’s existing sanctions list and its oil and arms embargo.

Britain has also raised the prospect of sanctions on Russians involved in the Syrian conflict, adding them to the EU’s list of 208 people and 69 companies that also includes three Iranians, diplomats told Reuters.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who held talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday in London, said Russia’s Aleppo bombing “shames humanity” and called Russia the Syrian government’s “puppeteers.”

Britain and the United States say they are considering imposing additional sanctions on Assad and his supporters, without naming Russia.

Spain, which co-sponsored with France a U.N. resolution for a ceasefire that the Kremlin vetoed this month, would back Russian sanctions if they helped “bring Russia’s position closer to ours” acting Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said.

European Union leaders will discuss Russia and possibly talk about new sanctions at a summit on Thursday. But Russia’s closest EU allies Greece, Cyprus and Hungary are against.

Austria, a transit point for flows for Russian gas to Europe, also voiced its opposition on Monday.

“The idea to have additional sanctions against Russia would be wrong,” Austria’s Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz told reporters. “We do not need a further escalation,” he said.

Germany also appeared cautious, with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier rejecting adding punitive measures against Russia, although a German newspaper has cited sources saying that Chancellor Angela Merkel was in favor.

The West imposed broad economic sanctions on Moscow over its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support for rebels in Ukraine.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (C) takes part in a meeting on the situation in Syria at Lancaster House in London

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (C) takes part in a meeting on the situation in Syria at Lancaster House in London October 16, 2016. REUTERS/JUSTIN TALLIS/Pool

 

EU PEACE ROLE?

U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura briefed EU ministers about the chances for peace after talks that took place without Europe in the Swiss city of Lausanne on Saturday. Diplomats meanwhile tried to craft a diplomatic statement on behalf of all 28 governments condemning Russian air strikes.

France and Britain want tough language, incensed by the Russian-backed campaign has killed several hundred people, including dozens of children, since the collapse of a truce brokered by Russia and the United States.

According to one draft seen by Reuters, EU ministers will condemn the “catastrophic escalation” of the Syrian government offensive to capture eastern Aleppo, where 8,000 rebels are holding out against Syrian, Russian and Iranian-backed forces.

They will say that air strikes on hospitals and civilians “may amount to war crimes”, calling on “Syria and its allies” to go to the International Criminal Court

Diplomats say the European Union will also call for a ceasefire with an observation mission, immediate access for an EU aid package announced on Oct. 2 and a bigger role for EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

With no military presence in the Syria conflict, the EU is searching for a role as peacemaker and could try to lead a process to bring regional powers including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey to talks on a final peace settlement, if a ceasefire can be agreed and aid delivered first.

Paris is adamant Mogherini have no contact with Assad.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Editing by Dominic Evans)

First unaccompanied children from Calais ‘Jungle’ reach Britain

UK Border Force staff escort the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain as they arrive at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London,

LONDON (Reuters) – A first busload of children arrived in Britain on Monday from the “Jungle” camp near the French port of Calais as the British government started to act on its commitment to take in unaccompanied migrant children before the camp is destroyed.

The fate of children staying in the Jungle, a squalid camp where up to 10,000 people fleeing war or poverty in the Middle East and Africa have converged seeking ways to cross to Britain, has been a political problem for the British government.

Religious leaders, refugee rights campaign groups and opposition parties have accused the government of dragging its heels on helping to move unaccompanied children out of the camp, which France has said it will soon demolish.

The French and British interior ministers, Bernard Cazeneuve and Amber Rudd, agreed in talks on Oct. 10 to speed up the process of moving children eligible to go to Britain out of the Jungle.

Fourteen children, the first whose cases have been processed, arrived by bus in Croydon, south London, to be reunited with relatives already living in Britain. Faith leaders and aid workers were on hand to welcome and assist them.

“The camp at Calais is a desperate, dangerous, horrible place, nowhere any adult should be, let alone any child,” said Bishop of Croydon Jonathan Clark.

“So this is a really good day to celebrate as some of those children begin to make their journeys to be reunited with their families,” he told reporters outside a Croydon church.

It is not known exactly how many children will be brought to Britain. The British interior ministry has said 80 children had been accepted for transfer from France so far this year under EU family reunification rules known as the Dublin regulation.

The Red Cross estimates that 1,000 unaccompanied children are living in the Jungle, of whom 178 have been identified as having family ties to Britain. It has said some of these children have been held back by bureaucracy.

Separately from the Dublin process, Britain has sent out a team to work with the French authorities to identify children who can be brought to Britain under the terms of a change to British immigration law known as the Dubs amendment.

It states that Britain will take in “vulnerable unaccompanied child refugees” who arrived in the EU before March 20, even if they do not have relatives in Britain.

March 20 was date of an EU-Turkey deal aimed at limiting the flow of migrants into the bloc, which reached crisis levels in 2015. The Dubs amendment is named after the politician who proposed it, Alf Dubs, who came to Britain as a Jewish child refugee fleeing Nazi persecution.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Stephen Addison)

Nice prepares to remember attack victims in special ceremony

A woman stands near a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France, October 12, 2016. REUTERS

NICE, France (Reuters) – Three months after a man plowed his truck into crowds on France’s national day in Nice, the southern coastal city is trying to recover as it prepares to remember the 86 victims in a national ceremony of remembrance.

Tributes line the sea-front promenade along which Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a 19-ton truck, mowing down people watching fireworks on France’s July 14 Bastille Day, before police shot him dead.

Curious visitors and grieving locals stop to look at bouquets of flowers, toys and yellowing notes left in memory of the victims.

“We haven’t forgotten it. People are less trusting, more nervous and the atmosphere is heavier,” said Stephanie Marton, a mother of five who was on the promenade with her children that night. “(It) is not at all like what it was before July 14.”

Marton said the family, who threw themselves onto the ground out of the way of the truck hurtling toward them, still lives in the shadow of the attack.

People walk past a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France,

People walk past a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France, October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

“Three months later, it’s still in their heads and it’s still hard for them,” she said. “They still have nightmares at night – and I sometimes get them too – and they find it really hard to be near the promenade.”

Nice was due to hold a national ceremony of remembrance, led by French President Francois Hollande, on Friday, exactly three months after the attack.

But a statement from his Elysee Palace on Thursday said the event, on a hill overlooking the French Riviera and attended by survivors and victims’ families, will now take place on Saturday due to bad weather.

(Reporting by Michel Bernouin; Writing by Johnny Cotton and Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Tom Heneghan)