France — A truck loaded with weapons and hand grenades drove onto a sidewalk for more than a mile, 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, authorities said.

Nice prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre described a horrific scene, with bodies strewn 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 Mediterranee, 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." He said the driver emerged with a gun and started shooting.

France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 80 people were killed, including children, and 18 were in critical condition, and the Paris prosecutor's office announced an investigation for "murder, attempted murder in an organized group linked to a terrorist enterprise."

"We are in a war with terrorists who want to strike us at any price and in a very violent way," Cazeneuve said.

The ranking politician of the Alpes-Maritime department that includes Nice said the truck plowed into the crowd over a distance of 2 kilometers (1.2 miles). Many of those on the ground were in shorts and other summer clothing.

It was not immediately clear who would have been behind an attack, but France has recently seen a spate of dramatic assaults by jihadist groups, including the Islamic State group which straddles Iraq and Syria.

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