|
 In the worst attack, a Paris city hall official said four gunmen
systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people at a rock
concert at the Bataclan concert hall before anti-terrorist commandos
launched an assault on the building. Dozens of survivors were
rescued, and bodies were still being recovered on Saturday morning.
Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in the Paris
region, the official said, including an apparent double suicide
bombing outside the Stade de France national stadium, where Hollande
and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer
international.
The assaults came as France, a founder member of the U.S.-led
coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and
Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks.
It was the worst such attack in Europe since the Madrid train
bombings of 2004, in which 191 died.
 Hollande said the attacks had been organized from abroad by Islamic
State with internal help.
"Faced with war, the country must take appropriate action," he said
after an emergency meeting of security chiefs. He also announced
three days of national mourning.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy added in a statement: “The war we
must wage should be total.”
During a visit to Vienna, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said
"we are witnessing a kind of medieval and modern fascism at the same
time."
In its claim of responsibility, Islamic State said the attacks were
a response to France's campaign against its fighters.
It also distributed an undated video in which a militant said France
would not live peacefully as long it took part in U.S.-led bombing
raids against them.
"As long as you keep bombing you will not live in peace. You will
even fear traveling to the market," said a bearded Arabic-speaking
militant, flanked by other fighters.
A French government source told Reuters there were 127 dead, 67 in
critical condition and 116 wounded. Six attackers blew themselves up
and one was shot by police. There may have been an eighth attacker,
but this is not confirmed.
The attacks, in which automatic weapons and explosives belts were
used, lasted 40 minutes.
"The terrorists, the murderers, raked several cafe terraces with
machine-gun fire before entering (the concert hall). There were many
victims in terrible, atrocious conditions in several places," police
prefect Michel Cadot told reporters.
 STATE OF EMERGENCY
After being whisked from the stadium near the blasts, Hollande
declared a national state of emergency, the first since World War
Two. Border controls were temporarily reimposed to stop perpetrators
escaping.
Local sports events were suspended, the rock band U2 canceled a
concert, the Paris metro railway was closed and schools,
universities and municipal buildings were ordered to stay shut on
Saturday. However some rail and air services were expected to run.
Sylvestre, a young man who was at the Stade de France when bombs
went off there, said he was saved by his cellphone, which he was
holding to his ear when debris hit it.
“This is the cell phone that took the hit, it's what saved me," he
said. "Otherwise my head would have been blown to bits," he said,
showing the phone with its screen smashed.
French newspapers spoke of "carnage" and "horror". Le Figaro's
headline said: "War in the heart of Paris" on a black background
with a picture of people on stretchers.
Emergency services were mobilized, police leave was canceled, 1,500
army reinforcements were drafted into the Paris region and hospitals
recalled staff to cope with the casualties. Radio stations warned
Parisians to stay at home and urged residents to give shelter to
anyone caught out in the street.
The deadliest attack was on the Bataclan, a popular concert venue
where the Californian rock group Eagles of Death Metal was
performing. The hall is near the former offices of the satirical
weekly Charlie Hebdo, target of a deadly attack by Islamist gunmen
in January.
Some witnesses in the hall said they heard the gunmen shout Islamic
chants and slogans condemning France's role in Syria.
[to top of second column] |
HIGH ALERT
France has been on high alert ever since the attacks on the Charlie
Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January killed
18 people.
Those attacks briefly united France in defense of freedom of speech,
with a mass demonstration of more than a million people. But that
unity has since broken down, with far-right populist Marine Le Pen
gaining on both mainstream parties by blaming immigration and Islam
for France's security problems.
It was not clear what political impact the latest attacks would have
less than a month before regional elections in which Le Pen's
National Front is set to make further advances.
The governing Socialist Party and the National Front suspended their
election campaigns.
U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel led
a global chorus of solidarity with France. U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon condemned the "despicable attacks" while Pope Francis
called the killings "inhuman".
Italy, Russia, Belgium and Hungary all tightened security measures.
Poland, meanwhile, said that the attacks meant it could not now take
its share of migrants under a European Union plan. Many of the
migrants currently flooding into Europe are refugees from Syria.
Julien Pearce, a journalist from Europe 1 radio, was inside the
concert hall when the shooting began. In an eyewitness report posted
on the station's website, Pearce said several very young
individuals, who were not wearing masks, entered the hall during the
concert, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and started "blindly
shooting at the crowd".
"There were bodies everywhere," he said.
POINT-BLANK
The gunmen shot their victims in the back, finishing some off at
point-blank range before reloading their guns and firing again,
Pearce said, after escaping into the street by a stage door,
carrying a wounded girl on his shoulder.
Toon, a 22-year-old messenger who lives near the Bataclan, was going
into the concert hall with two friends at around 10.30 p.m. (2130
GMT) when he saw three young men dressed in black and armed with
machine guns. He stayed outside.
One of the gunmen began firing into the crowd. "People were falling
like dominoes," he told Reuters. He saw people shot in the leg,
shoulder and back, with several lying on the floor, apparently dead.
Two explosions were heard near the Stade de France in the northern
suburb of Saint-Denis, where the France-Germany soccer match was
being played. A witness said one of the detonations blew people into
the air outside a McDonald's restaurant opposite the stadium.
In central Paris, shooting erupted in mid-evening outside a
Cambodian restaurant in the capital's 10th district.
Eighteen people were killed when a gunman opened fire on Friday
night diners sitting at outdoor terraces in the popular Charonne
area nearby in the 11th district.
The prosecutor mentioned five locations in close proximity where
shootings took place around the same time.
(Additional reporting by Geert de Clercq, Jean-Baptiste Vey,
Emmanuel Jarry, Elizabeth Pineau, Julien Pretot and Bate Felix
Tabi-Tabe; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
