Nice: When Jasmine woke up the morning after the horrific Bastille Day attack, she thought the commotion upstairs was an early Friday morning fancy dress party because she had seen men enter the building wearing masks.

The men in masks were in fact French police raiding the first-floor of number 62 Route du Turin in the eastern district of Abbatoir, where Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a delivery driver, had been living in his rented apartment for the past year.

When Fairfax Media visited Lahouaiej-Bouhlel's flat, police were interviewing 49-year-old Jasmine in her ground-flat. Upstairs, the door to Lahouiej-Bouhlel's flat showed signs of a forced entry. Wooden debris remained on the floor and the broken lock provided a glimpse into the apartment where furniture had been turned over and ransacked.

Jasmine had been at the Bastille Day fireworks with her 19-year-old daughter. "It was very terrifying, but luckily we were not hurt," she said.

Jasmine's daughter has refused to return home since learning their neighbour, who they barely knew but observed as a keen cyclist, always taking his bike upstairs and into his apartment, was the man who drove a rented refrigerated truck nearly two kilometres down the popular Promenade des Anglais, killing 84 and wounding more than 200 people. 

"She doesn't want to be in the same building as where the killer lived," Jasmine said.  

Jasmine and another woman who lived in the building, 24-year-old Melissa, both described the killer as "beautiful" but a loner at home.

"He was very, very beautiful," Jasmine said. 

"I could tell he was home because of the smell – he wore a lot of perfume," Melissa said.

Both women were interviewed by police, who asked what they knew of the man. It was very little. 

"I only saw him four times, saying 'hello' and 'goodbye'," said Melissa. "[What he did] wasn't written on his face."

"He didn't look anything like the pictures – he's more beautiful in person; I didn't even recognise that it was him until the police were in the building," Melissa said. 

Melissa described the neighbourhood as very safe and calm, and said she had never been harassed in the time she had lived there with her baby daughter, but the area was referred to in the media as "rundown" and "poor".

Islamic State has claimed Lahouiej-Bouhlel as one of their "soldiers", but stopped short of claiming it had organised the attack.

French police on Saturday said they had arrested five men who were friends with Lahouiej-Bouhlel, but it remains unclear if the killer was motivated by radical Islamic ideology. If so, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said it seemed the attacker "radicalised his views very rapidly."

"These are the first elements that our investigation has come up with through interviews with his acquaintances," Mr Cazeneuve said on Saturday, without offering further details. 

"We are now facing individuals who are responding positively to the messages issued by the Islamic State without having had any special training and without having access to weapons that allow them to commit mass murder."

with Bloomberg and Washington Post

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