Three teams of extremists carried out the coordinated gun-and-suicide bombing attacks across Paris that left 129 people dead and 352 injured, a French prosecutor said today.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said 99 of the injured were in critical condition after the “act of barbarism.” He said the attackers in the Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people died, mentioned Syria and Iraq during their deadly rampage.
President Francois Hollande has vowed that France will wage “merciless” war on the Islamic State group, after the jihadists claimed responsibility for the attacks Friday night.
Grief, alarm and resolve spread across Europe today as officials raced to piece together information on the seven attackers. Officials said one was a young Frenchman known to the authorities. In addition, a Syrian passport found near the body of another attacker was linked to a man who entered the European Union through a Greek island last month.
Attackers launched gun attacks at Paris cafes, detonated suicide bombs near France’s national stadium and killed hostages inside a concert hall during a rock show — an attack on the heart of the pulsing City of Light.
“These places are the places we visit every week,” said Ahsan Naeem, a 39—year—old filmmaker who has lived in Paris for seven years. “Streets we walk every day... All those places will have been full of my people. My friends. My acquaintances.”
An act of war
Hollande, who declared three days of national mourning and raised the nation’s security to its highest level, called the carnage “an act of war that was prepared, organised, planned from abroad with internal help.”
The president said France would increase its military efforts to crush IS. He said France — which is part of a US—led coalition bombing suspected IS targets in Syria and Iraq and also has troops fighting militants in Africa — “will be merciless toward the barbarians of Islamic State group.”
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility in an online statement in Arabic and French circulated by supporters. It was not immediately possible to confirm the authenticity of the admission, which bore the group’s logo and resembled previous verified statements from the group.
The statement mocked France’s involvement in air attacks on suspected IS bases in Syria and Iraq, noting that France’s air power was “of no use to them in the streets and rotten alleys of Paris.”
State of Emergency
Many of Paris’s top tourist attractions closed down today, including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum and the Disneyland theme park east of the capital. Some 3,000 troops were deployed to help restore order and reassure a frightened populace
France was in a nationwide state of emergency today after a night of horror in Paris when gunmen sprayed restaurants with bullets, massacred scores of concert-goers and launched suicide attacks near the national stadium, killing at least 120 people.
At least eight militants, all wearing suicide vests, brought unprecedented violence to the streets of the French capital, in the bloodiest attacks in Europe since the Madrid train bombings in 2004.
Armed with AK47s and shouting “Allahu akbar”, four of the group marched into a rock concert at the Bataclan venue in eastern Paris, murdering at least 82 people and taking dozens hostage.
“They didn’t stop firing. There was blood everywhere, corpses everywhere. Everyone was trying to flee,” said Pierre Janaszak, a radio presenter who was at the concert by US rock band Eagles of Death Metal.
Hinting at their motives, the gunmen were overheard raging at French President Francois Hollande and his military interventions in the Syrian civil war against the Islamic State group.
“I clearly heard them say ‘It’s the fault of Hollande, it’s the fault of your president, he should not have intervened in Syria’,” he added.
Suspicion immediately fell on Islamic State jihadists or Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, as the likely perpetrators of the coordinated assault which left at least 120 people dead and 200 injured across six locations.
Investigators said at least eight attackers were dead by the end of last night’s violence.
More than 500 French fighters are thought to be with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, according to official figures, while 250 have returned and some 750 expressed a desire to go.
Charlie Hebdo attack
In January, 17 people were killed in Paris in attacks that targeted satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. Another disaster was narrowly averted in August when a gunman was overpowered on a packed high-speed train in northern France.
No arrests had been made by early this morning and it was unclear if any gunmen were still on the loose. Police were screening hours of video-surveillance at the multiple locations.
As a precaution, all sports events were cancelled today in Paris, while access to public facilities such as museums and swimming pools was restricted.
“Terrorist attacks of an unprecedented level are under way across the Paris region,” Hollande said in an emotional televised message last night in which he declared a nation-wide state of emergency.
“It’s a horror,” he added.
The president himself was caught up in the carnage and had to be hastily evacuated from the national Stade de France stadium when suicide bombers struck outside during a friendly football international between France and Germany.
At first, very few of the crowd appeared to be aware of the significance of what was happening despite the appearance of helicopters low in the sky. The match continued as other attacks began around the capital.
Bataclan music venue bloodshed
The worst of the bloodshed occurred at the Bataclan music venue in the trendy 11th arrondissement where more than 1,000 rock fans were at a sell-out show for the Eagles of Death Metal band.
Four gunmen wearing suicide vests and armed with automatic weapons stormed the venue and began spraying the crowd with bullets.
As screams rang out and survivors ran over the injured or dead to make their ways to the exits or places to hide, the militants took hostages and then began executing them.
“We heard people screaming — the hostages particularly — and the threats from the kidnappers,” added another survivor, 34-year-old Charles.
Along with around 20 others, he fled to a toilet where he pushed through the ceiling and hid in the crawl space.
Three of the militants blew up their explosive vests as elite anti-terror police raided the venues around 12.30 am (0500 IST), while a fourth was shot dead.
Another attacker blew himself up in nearby Boulevard Voltaire, as the streets were filled with the sound of police sirens and convoys of ambulances shipping hundreds of injured to hospital.
Several restaurants near the concert hall were also targeted, including a popular Cambodian eatery in the trendy Canal St. Martin area, whose bars and restaurants heave with the young and affluent on a typical Friday night.
An extra 1,500 soldiers were mobilised to reinforce police in Paris, Hollande’s office said, with the city still recovering from the psychological wounds inflicted by the Charlie Hebdo attack.
War in central Paris
French media reacted with horror but determination to the scenes of devastation.
“War in central Paris,” splashed centre-right daily Le Figaro, with Le Parisien taking up a similar theme. “This time it’s war.”
Other reactions were a mix of fear and defiance.
Concert-goer Charles, who spoke to AFP at the Bataclan, said he would refuse to be cowed by the terror he had experienced.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced that all public demonstrations would be banned until Thursday and local governments would have the option to impose nightly curfews.
The attacks last evening struck at the heart of Parisian life: diners in cafes, concertgoers watching a rock band, spectators at a soccer match.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the places attacked are ones Parisians love — and ones where they celebrate diversity.
“It is this Paris that was hit. Probably because this example of living together, which is so strong in our city, is unbearable for fanatical people,” she said.
Parisians expressed shock, disgust and defiance in equal measure. Some areas were quiet, but hundreds queued outside a hospital near the Bataclan concert hall to donate blood. As a shrine of flowers expanded along the sidewalk, a lone guitarist sang John Lennon’s peace ballad “Imagine.”
Authorities said eight attackers died, seven in suicide bombings, a new terror tactic in France. Police said they shot and killed the other assailant.
Molins, the prosecutor, said all the suicide attackers wore identical explosives vests.
Border checks stepped up
Authorities in Belgium conducted raids in a Brussels neighborhood today and made three arrests linked to the Paris attacks. Justice Minister Koen Geens told the VRT network that the arrests came after a car with Belgian license plates was seen close to the Bataclan theater.
Officials in Greece said the Syrian passport found in Paris had shown its owner entering in October through Leros, one of the islands that tens of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in Syria and elsewhere have been using as a gateway into the European Union.
If the attack does involve militants who traveled to Europe amid millions of refugees from the Middle East, the implications could be profound.
Poland’s prospective minister for European affairs, Konrad Szymanski, said that in light of the attacks, Poland would not comply with an EU plan to accept refugees unless it received “guarantees of security.”
The attack brought an immediate tightening of borders as Hollande declared a state of emergency and announced renewed border checks. Germany also stepped up border checks.
The militants launched six gun and bomb attacks in rapid succession on apparently indiscriminate civilian targets.
Three suicide bombs targeted spots around the national Stade de France stadium, in the north of the capital, where Hollande was watching a France—Germany soccer match. Fans inside the stadium recoiled at the sound of explosions, but the match continued.
Around the same time, fusillades of bullets shattered the clinking of wine glasses in a trendy Paris neighborhood as gunmen targeted a string of crowded cafes.
The attackers next stormed the Bataclan concert hall, which was hosting the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal. They opened fire on the panicked audience and took members hostage. As police closed in, three detonated explosive belts, killing themselves, according to Paris police chief Michel Cadot.
Another attacker detonated a suicide bomb on Boulevard Voltaire, near the music hall, the prosecutor’s office said.