Nice attack: Lorry driver identified by French press as 31-year-old French man of Tunisian descent

The man, shot by police, had firearms and grenades in the lorry, according to reports

French media have identified the driver in the lorry attack on a Bastille Day crowd in Nice as a 31-year-old French-Tunisian man.

The man was shot by police after he deliberately drove at a packed street of spectators, killing at least 84 and wounding many more.

Local newspaper Nice-Matin reported the man had firearms and grenades in the lorry with him at the time of the attack.

According to the AFP news agency, which quoted a police source, the man has been identified by papyers found inside the cab of the lorry.

The papers indicate the man was a resident of Nice, AFP reported.

The attack, which came eight months and a day after Isis gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris, appeared so far to be the work of a lone assailant.

The truck careered for hundreds of metres along the famed Promenade des Anglais seafront, slamming into spectators watching the fireworks, listening to an orchestra or strolling above the beach towards the grand, century-old Hotel Negresco.

"It's a scene of horror," a local member of parliament, Eric Ciotti, told France Info radio, saying the truck had "mown down several hundred people". An Interior Ministry spokesman said "several dozen" had died.

Nice-Matin said 42 people were in critical condition and many others injured.

"People went down like ninepins," Jacques, who runs Le Queenie restaurant on the seafront, told France Info.

"I saw people go down," bystander Franck Sidoli, who was visibly shocked, told Reuters at the scene. "Then the truck stopped, we were just five metres away. A woman was there, she lost her son. Her son was on the ground, bleeding."

Nice-Matin posted photographs of the truck, its windshield starred by a score of bullets and its radiator grille destroyed.