CRS in Nice, in front of Notre-Dame de Nice church, October 31, 2020. -

LOUAI-BARAKAT / SIPA

The investigation continues after the attack in Nice last Thursday.

Two men aged 25 and 63 were arrested, bringing to six the number of people taken into custody in the investigation into the fatal knife attack in the basilica of Nice, we learned this Sunday from judicial source.

The two men were arrested late Saturday afternoon at the home of an individual arrested a few hours earlier, around 3 p.m., in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes), said this source.

The latter, a 29-year-old Tunisian national, is suspected of having rubbed shoulders with the assailant, Brahim Issaoui.

The attacker could not be heard by investigators

Three other suspects were still in custody on Sunday: a 47-year-old man, arrested Thursday evening after being seen alongside the attacker on CCTV footage the day before the attack, and a 35-year-old man arrested Friday in Nice for having been in contact with Brahim Issaoui.

The cousin of the second suspect, 33, who was present at his home during a police search, was also arrested.

Brahim Issaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian, seriously injured by bullets by a municipal police patrol, could not be heard by investigators.

Three people killed

At 8:29 a.m. on Thursday, he entered the Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption basilica, in the city center, where he slaughtered a 60-year-old woman, Nadine Devillers, and the sacristan, Vincent Loquès, aged 55. years.

A 44-year-old Brazilian mother Simone Barreto Silva, stabbed several times, died in a nearby restaurant where she had taken refuge.

According to a source close to the investigation, Brahim Issaoui arrived in Nice on Tuesday and was spotted by CCTV cameras near the basilica the day before the incident.

"It is still much too early to know if he benefited from complicity, what were his motivations for coming to France and when this idea germinated in him," another source close to the matter told AFP on Saturday.

"The continuation of the analysis" of the two phones found in his business and "the investigation on the Tunisian side" will be "decisive", added this source.

Cooperation between Tunisia and France

Tunisian head of government Hichem Mechichi on Saturday called on his interior and justice ministers to fully cooperate with the French authorities in the investigation opened by the national anti-terrorism prosecution.

Brahim Issaoui, who had a criminal record of common law - violence and drugs - had left the city of Sfax, in the center of the country, in mid-September, where he lived with his family.

Arrived illegally in Europe by the Italian island of Lampedusa on September 20, he would have landed on the continent, in Bari, in southern Italy, on October 9.

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