NICE: Up to 75 people were feared dead and around 100 injured on Friday in an “attack” in the French Riviera resort of Nice after a truck ploughed into a crowd of people leaving a Bastille Day firework display, city officials said.

Witnesses described hearing gunfire, although this was not immediately confirmed by the authorities with images on social media showed casualties lying in the street, some being tended by paramedics.

The incident comes as France remains badly shaken by November 2015 attacks which killed 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris and nightspots across the city.

Describing it as a “major criminal attack”, Sebastien Humbert, the sub-prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes region, told BFMTV the driver had left “several dozen, perhaps around 30 people dead” and “around a hundred injured”.

Police and ambulances went to the scene and authorities from the local Alpes-Maritimes prefecture urged residents to stay indoors.