A huge pile of flowers on Nice's Promenade des Anglais has become the main focus for mourners to pay tribute to those killed in the horrific Bastille Day attack. Many smaller, almost unbearably poignant, tributes have been left at the spots where people lost their lives all the way along the waterfront. Mourners have placed flowers, candles, stuffed animals and French flags at these points of death, many still identifiable by bloodstains.

Nice attack flowers
Valery Hache/AFP

Eighty-four people were killed when a truck was driven into the crowd watching a fireworks display marking the French national day. The truck's driver Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel rented the heaviest vehicle he could find to inflict maximum casualties, zigzagging along the Promenade des Anglais, careering on to the pavements, mowing down families and friends. At least 10 children were among the dead. Of the 308 people injured, more than two dozen are reported to still be in intensive care, 18 of them with life-threatening conditions.

The Bastille Day attack in the Riviera city plunged France into grief and fear again, just eight months after gunmen killed 130 people in Paris. Those attacks, and one in Brussels four months ago, shocked Western Europe, already anxious over security challenges from mass immigration, open borders and pockets of Islamist radicalism.