Were Euro 2016 and England fans the original target for the Nice lorry attack?
Arrests in Belgium on the eve of the tournament are believed to have put attacks on ice
TERROR experts say last night's horror lorry attack in Nice could have been a 'delayed operation' originally planned for the Euro 2016 football championships.
A swathe of arrests in Belgium in the run up to the tournament are believed to have scuppered several bloody attacks plotted to take place throughout the month-long sporting event.
Last night's attack took place just two and a half weeks after 40,000 England fans and 10,000 Iceland fans gathered in Nice for their last-16 clash.
Weeks earlier, 12 people were arrested and 40 detained in total after police launched overnight raids in and around the Belgian capital Brussels.
At the time, it was widely reported ISIS saw the arrests - in the districts of Molenbeek, Schaerbeek and Forestas - as nothing more than a "setback".
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The terror organisation's leaders bragged they still had plenty of people 'in place' across Europe ready to wreak murder and mayhem.
The huge security operation surrounding the tournament is also believed to have been a major deterrent against attacks.
Dr David Lowe, a terrorism expert from Liverpool John Moores University, said: "It wouldn't surprise me at all if this was an attack which was originally planned for the Euro 2016 championships.
"There is clearly a degree of planning involved here. I believe it is probably a small cell which has been working on this attack for some time.
"If it was an attack originally planned for the Euros, then Bastille Day is an obvious replacement because of what it means to the French people.
"You need several people to plan this kind of attack. Someone needs to buy, rent or steal the lorry and someone needs to source the weapons - which is why I don't believe this is a lone operator."
On Sunday, France had breathed a sigh of relief as the month-long football tournament it hosted ended without an attack.
Earlier this year, ISIS terrorists failed in their bid to blow up the Stade de France – the national stadium where France took on Germany in front of an eye-watering 80,000 spectators.
That incident was part of a series of co-ordinated assaults on the city that killed 130 people and came after an earlier attack on Paris in January that left 17 dead.
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