France extends emergency
French lawmakers approved a six-month extension of emergency rule yesterday after last week's truck attack on holiday crowds in Nice, the third deadly assault in just 18 months for which Islamist militants have claimed responsibility.
President Francois Hollande's Socialist government, accused by political opponents of doing too little to avert the attack that killed 84 and hurt hundreds, also said it would step up strikes against Islamic State in its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
A year from elections, Hollande is under intense pressure as opponents accuse his administration of police failings over the tragedy. A Tunisian man was able to drive a 19-tonne truck along a packed sea-front promenade, mowing down people in the Bastille Day crowd, before he was shot dead by police.
The extension of exceptional search-and-arrest powers for police was approved by 489 votes to 26 shortly before dawn in France's National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, but not without renewed calls for an inquest.
Emergency rule has been in place since attacks on Paris last November in which Islamist militants killed 130 people. Another 17 people were killed in January 2015 in attacks that began with the shooting of journalists working for Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly that had published cartoons mocking Islam.
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