UPDATE: Attack leads French President Hollande to call for extension of state of emergency

NICE, France (AP)

French President Francois Hollande says he will call a defense council meeting Friday that brings together defense, interior and other key ministers, before heading to Nice.

Besides ensuring continuation of the state of emergency and the Sentinel operation that puts 10,000 soldiers on patrol, he said he was calling up reserve to help police, particularly at French borders.

Hollande says “the terrorist character” of the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice cannot be denied.

He confirmed that 77 people, including some children, were killed when the truck drove through the crowds who had just watched a fireworks display on seafront in the city. He said 20 wounded people are in critical condition.

Just hours after announcing in the traditional Bastille Day interview that the state of emergency, in place since November attacks that killed 130 in Paris, was to be removed, Hollande said it must be extended for three months. That decision will need parliamentary approval.

He also said other measures will be put in place to counter the threat.

The president of the region that includes Nice has announced that the city’s jazz festival, due to open on Saturday, and a Rihanna concert planned for Friday evening, have both been canceled after the deadly truck attack.

Christian Estrosi said flags would be lowered across the city on Friday. He said a truck plowed into people celebrating Bastille Day at a fireworks display on the city’s famous Promenade des Anglais.

The government had put extra security measures in place for the celebrations.

European Council president Donald Tusk says it is a “tragic paradox” that the victims of the attack in Nice were celebrating “liberty, equality and fraternity” — France’s motto — on the country’s national day.

Tusk tweeted a photograph of himself and other European and Asian leaders standing in tribute to the Nice victims at the Asia-Europe

meeting in Mongolia.

U.S. President Barack Obama has condemned what he says “appears to be a horrific terrorist attack” in Nice.

Obama says, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and other loved-ones of those killed.”

Noting that the attack occurred on Bastille Day, Obama praised “the extraordinary resilience and democratic values that have made France an inspiration to the entire world.”

Obama is offering French officials “any assistance that they may need to investigate this attack and bring those responsible to justice.”

France’s ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, characterized the events in Nice as a “terrorist attack.”

“Our democracies — France, the United States, our other partners , we are besieged, we face a terrible threat,” Araud said at a Bastille Day reception at the French Embassy in Washington late today.

The 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 today in what some officials and eyewitnesses called a deliberate attack. Authorities said at least 77 people were killed.

Nice prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre described a horrific scene, with bodies strewn about along the roadway. He stopped, however, short of using the word attack, while ackn7wledging that "it has many ingredients of an attack that allow us to think that."

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), killing 75 people and wounding 50. Many of those on the ground were in shorts and other summer clothing.

Eric Ciotti said on BFM TV that police killed the driver "apparently after an exchange of gunfire."

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. She called the incident "an attack."

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."