Gunmen and bombers attacked restaurants, a
concert hall and a sports stadium at locations across Paris on Friday, killing
at least 120 people in a deadly rampage that a shaken President Francois
Hollande called an unprecedented terrorist attack.
A Paris city hall official said four gunmen
systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people attending a rock concert at
the Bataclan music hall. Anti-terrorist commandos eventually launched an
assault on the building. The gunmen detonated explosive belts and dozens of
shocked survivors were rescued.
Some 40 more people were killed in five other
attacks in the Paris region, the city hall official said, including an apparent
double suicide bombing outside the national stadium, where Hollande and the
German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international. Some 200
people were injured.
The coordinated assault came as France, a
founder member of the U.S.-led coalition waging air strikes against Islamic
State fighters in Syria and Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks ahead
of a global climate conference due to open later this month.
Paris Public Prosecutor Francois Molins said the
death toll was at least 120. His spokeswoman said eight assailants had also
died, seven of whom had blown themselves up with explosive belts at various
locations, while one had been shot dead by police.
"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.
After being whisked from the soccer stadium near
the blasts, Hollande declared a nationwide state of emergency - the first since
the end of World War Two - and announced the closure of France's borders to
stop perpetrators escaping.
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 are expected to run.
"This is a horror," the visibly shaken
president said in a midnight television address to the nation before chairing
an emergency cabinet meeting.
He later went to the scene of the bloodiest
attack, the Bataclan music hall, and vowed that the government would wage a
"merciless" fight against terrorism.
All 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.
The prosecutor's spokeswoman said she could not
say whether any gunmen were still at large.
Radio stations broadcast warnings to Parisians
to stay home and leave the streets 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 concert hall is just a few hundred meters from 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.
"We know where these attacks come
from," Hollande said, without naming any individual group. "There are
indeed good reasons to be afraid."
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.
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