PARIS — The Paris area reeled Friday night from a shooting rampage, explosions and mass hostage-taking that President François Hollande called an unprecedented terrorist attack on France. He closed the borders and mobilized the military in a national emergency.
French
television and news services quoted the police as saying around 100
people had been killed at a concert venue where hostages had been taken,
and dozens more killed in apparently coordinated attacks outside the
country’s main sports stadium and at least five other popular locations
in the city.
Witnesses
on French television said the scene at the concert was a massacre.
Ambulances were seen racing back and forth in the area into the early
hours of Saturday morning.
The
casualties eclipsed the deaths and mayhem that roiled Paris in the
Charlie Hebdo massacre and related assaults around the French capital by
Islamic militant extremists less than a year ago.
An
explosion near the sports stadium, which French news services said may
have been a suicide bombing, came as Germany and France were playing a
soccer match, forcing a hasty evacuation of Mr. Hollande. As the scope
of the assaults quickly became clear, he convened an emergency cabinet
meeting and announced that France was closing its borders.
“As
I speak, terrorist attacks of an unprecedented scale are taking place
in the Paris region,” he said in a nationally televised address. “There
are several dozen dead, lots more wounded, it’s horrific.”
Mr.
Hollande said that on his orders the government had “mobilized all the
forces we can muster to neutralize the threats and secure all of the
areas.”
President
Obama in Washington came to the White House Briefing room to express
solidarity and offer aid and condolences. “Once again, we’ve seen an
outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians,” he said. “This is
an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of
France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal
values that we share.”
There
was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Twitter erupted with
celebratory messages by members and sympathizers of the Islamic State,
the extremist group based in Syria and Iraq that is under assault by
major powers including the United States, France and Russia.
The
main shooting appeared to have broken out at a popular music venue, The
Bataclan, where the American band Eagles of Death Metal was among those
playing, and French news services said as many as 100 hostages may have
been taken there — many of whom apparently were killed later. Some
accounts said grenades had been lobbed inside the music hall.
A
witness quoted by BFM television said he heard rounds of automatic
rifle fire and someone shouting “Allahu akbar!” at The Bataclan.
Another
witness who escaped the concert hall told BFM: “When they started
shooting we just saw flashes. People got down on the ground right away.”
French
news media reported that Kalashnikov rifles had been involved in the
shootings — a favored weapon of militants who have attacked targets in
France — and that many rounds had been fired.
Police sirens sounded throughout central Paris on Friday night.
American
and European counterterrorism officials were reviewing wiretaps and
other electronic surveillance records, but a senior American security
official said there was no immediate indication that there had been
suspicious chatter or other warning signs ahead of the attack.
Unlike
the attacks against Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in January,
terrorism experts said the targets of the Friday attacks had no apparent
rationale. Instead, assailants appeared to strike at random in hip
neighborhoods on a Friday night when many people would be starting to
enjoy the weekend.
“It’s
a Friday night and there’s a lot of people out, a lot of tourists out,”
said a senior European counterterrorism official. “If you want maximum
exposure you do it like this, in the dark when it’s scarier and more
difficult for police to act.”
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