Children's Hospital: We Were Ready, Aware Nice Was a Target

At Least 10 children and teenagers were among the victims

The children's hospital in Nice says it has treated some 30 children and adolescents injured in the France truck attack, including two who died during or after surgery.

The youngest victim was just around 6 months old, according to the Lenval foundation hospital spokeswoman Stephanie Simpson.

At least 84 people have died, 10 of those children and teenagers, after a man driving a rented refrigerator truck plowed through a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the seaside town on Thursday night. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins also said at a news conference Friday that 202 others were injured in the attack, 52 critically. Twenty-five others were on life support. 

Simpson told NBC News the hospital received 39 victims overnight, all but nine were children and teens, and that those remaining are still between "life and death."

"They were in a bad state," Simpson said. "A lot of trauma... broken legs."

She said the hospital staff had been trained for mass casualty situations, and were "really ready for this and really prepared" because Nice was "on a red mark for attacks."

"It's not like we were not aware, we were really ready," Simpson added.

Because the hospital only treats children, the adults who were taken there were transferred to other hospitals, she said. Three of those adults died, including one during the transfer.

The hospital, which is equipped with one of France's largest pediatric emergency units, also called the families of children it was already treating before the attack to ask them to pick up their children to free up rooms for the attack victims, according to the AP.

"There are still some children whose parents can't find them, they're not in the hospital and they don’t know where they are," Simpson told NBC. "There's one child. That we don’t know his or her identity."

The hospital is also offering psychological counseling to parents and siblings.

Contact Us