MP's react to Nice Attack; still no Dutch victims

Dutch parliamentarians reacted shocked and horrified to the attack in Nice, France on Thursday that left at least 84 people dead and hundreds injured. The first of the victims have been identified. So far none of the victims are Dutch and no Dutch have been reported missing, AD reports. Khadija Arib, president of the Dutch lower house of parliament Tweede Kamer, called it a "terrible and cowardly attack" on freedom and wished the victims and the whole French nation strength on Twitter. "You can not protect yourself from this kind of sick mind", she commented to broadcaster NOS, adding that she hopes people will not let this interfere in their daily lives, because that is what terrorists want. "I hope that people think carefully about the importance of a free society and also defend it."

Wat een verschrikkelijke en laffe aanslag op Frankrijk. Wens slachtoffers, nabestaanden en het Franse volk veel sterkte toe. #Nice

— Khadija Arib (@khadijaArib) July 15, 2016

Both leaders of the coalition parties expressed their sympathy with the French to NOS. "What should have been a public holiday has become a day of Grief. Our thoughts go out to the victims and survivors", VVD leader Halbe Zijlstra said. PvdA leader Diederik Samsom added: "On the moment the French celebrated their motto liberty, equality, brotherhood, a terrorist drove over people, it is unbelievable." "With this attack on the eve of the French national holiday, the country was again hit in the heart", D66 leader Alexander Pechtold said, according to Het Parool. "How hard sometimes and how very powerless words can sound so close after such an atrocity, we do not bow to terror."

Afschuwelijk nieuws uit Nice... Wat een onzekerheid #quatorzejuillet

— Alexander Pechtold (@APechtold) July 14, 2016

SP leader Emile Roemer called it horrible to "be robbed of your freedom on the day you celebrate freedom", CDA leader Sybrand Buma called the attack barbaric. GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver said that words feel powerless in the face of such cruel barbarism. PVV leader Geert Wilders again talked about war on Islam. "It will not stop until we close our borders to Islam and de-Islamize our societies."

This is a war.

And it will not stop until we close our borders for Islam and de-Islamize our societies.

No more terror.
No more Islam!

— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) July 15, 2016

Among the 84 people killed are many French, one Russian woman, a father and his 11-year-old son from America, two Armenians, an Ukrainian, a Swiss and three Germans, AD reports. So far no reports of Dutch casualties or missing Dutch.