The suspect likely used a car with a German registration plate.

In the immediate aftermath of the blast at the residential block in the La Rousse district,one fellow resident said it sounded as if ‘thunder was coming from behind the mountains’.

Meanwhile,a horrified witness recalled seeing Nasobina with her ‘feet missing’ before she,along with Ermolaev and his teenage son,was rushed to a hospital in Nice.

Silvano Ippolito,who lives across from the building,told BFM TV: ‘She was slumped over,covered in blood.’

He called for his wife,who is a doctor and was able to intervene ‘very quickly,before the emergency services arrived,to apply tourniquets and perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation’ as Nasobina was ‘losing consciousness’.

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