Paris attacks were co-ordinated by team of gunmen

Three co-ordinated teams of jihadi gunmen struck at six different sites across Paris in a bloody wave of suicide bombings and shootings that left nearly 130 people dead on Friday night, the Paris public prosecutor has said.

François Molins told a news conference on Saturday that at least 129 people were killed and 352 more injured – including 90 critically – in the attacks on Friday night on the Stade de France, a city-centre concert hall and a series of packed cafes and bars.
The death toll is likely to rise.

Belgian police have arrested several people over alleged links to the attacks in a huge sweep, including one who was in the French capital at the time of the attacks, AFP reports.

Mr Molins said three French nationals had been arrested in Belgium, where they all lived, in connection with the attacks, France’s deadliest since the second world war and the worst witnessed in Europe since the 2004 Madrid railway bombings.

Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the atrocities, which the French president, François Hollande, denounced as an “act of war” that must be countered “mercilessly”.

One of the attackers has been named in French media as Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, a 29-year-old Frenchman from the southern Paris suburb of Courcouronnes. He had been flagged as being close to radical Islam, but had never been linked to terrorism.

He was reportedly identified from police fingerprint records as one of the attackers at the Bataclan music venue.

Relatives of one of the attackers, a Frenchman born in the Paris suburbs, were later arrested on Saturday, according to French authorities who said that searches were underway.

Mr Molins also said earlier that a Syrian passport, belonging to a man born in 1990 who was not known to the French authorities, had been found lying close by the bodies of two other jihadis, who both blew themselves up in the course of their attacks.

Greece’s citizen protection minister, Nikos Toskas, said earlier that the passport’s owner had entered the European Union through the Greek island of Leros on October 3rd, adding: “We do not know if the passport was checked by other countries through which the holder likely passed.”

Prosecutors have said seven attackers, in three groups, staged the six assaults across Paris on Friday evening, killing 129 people and injuring 352 people. Victims have been identified from 15 different countries.

The seven attackers also died in the attacks: six blew themselves up with suicide vests – the first-ever suicide bombings on French soil – and one was shot dead by police.

The carefully orchestrated series of attacks began at 9.20pm outside the Stade de France stadium outside north of Paris, where three suicide bombers detonated their explosive belts in the course of about 20 minutes. Mr Hollande, who was attending at a friendly football match between France and Germany at the stadium, had to be evacuated by his security guards to the interior ministry.

The Wall Street Journal reported that at least one of the attackers at the Stade de France had a ticket to the France-Germany friendly match on Friday night and tried to enter the venue, citing a security guard who was on duty, as well as French police.

The guard said the attacker was discovered wearing an explosives vest when he was searched at the entrance to the stadium about 15 minutes after the game started.

Shortly afterwards, three gunmen entered a popular concert hall in the capital’s north-eastern 11th arrondissement, while others opened fire on a string of cafes and restaurants not far away, crowded on a mild November evening.

They attacks came despite France – one of the founding members of the US-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria – being on a high state of alert for possible terrorist attacks in the run-up to a global climate conference later this month.

Under the first national state of emergency to be declared in France since 1961, an extra 1,500 soldiers were mobilised to reinforce police in Paris, Hollande’s office said. All Saturday’s sports events in the capital were cancelled, while many major shops, department stores, museums and tourist sites – including the Louvre, Eiffel Tower and Disneyland – stayed closed. Several metro stations were also shut.

Islamic State also released an undated video on Saturday calling on Muslims to continue attacking France. Its foreign media arm, Al-Hayat Media Centre, filmed a number of militants – apparently French citizens – sitting cross-legged in an unidentified location and burning their passports.

“As long as you keep bombing you will not live in peace. You will even fear travelling to the market,” one of the militants, identified as “Abu Maryam the Frenchman”, told the camera. Addressing his fellow jihadis, he added: “Indeed, you have been ordered to fight the infidel wherever you find him. What are you waiting for?”

As Parisians queued in their hundreds to give blood at a hospital close to a concert hall where the majority of the victims died, a Muslim community leader, Nadir Kahia, said he feared a “tsunami of hatred” against Muslims and residents of the capital’s poorer districts in the wake of the attacks.

The deadliest assault was at the Bataclan, a popular concert hall a few hundred metres from the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine hit along with a Jewish supermarket by Islamist militants in January during a three-day onslaught that left 20 people dead, including three Islamist gunmen.

Witnesses said the militants marched into the venue, where more than 1,000 people had gathered to hear the Californian rock band Eagles of Death Metal, armed with Kalashnikov rifles and shouting “Allahu akbar”. At least 89 people lost their lives in the ensuing carnage, Molins said, while dozens more were taken hostage for nearly three hours until armed riot police stormed the building at about midnight.

“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. Other survivors said three of the attackers detonated their suicide belts as the security forces burst in.
Summary of what we know:

At least 129 people killed

352 people injured, 99 critically

Shootings and explosions in six locations across city

Eight attackers died, seven of them by detonating suicide belts

Police are searching for accomplices

Highest death toll was at Bataclan theatre where 89 people died

Stade de France attack - unknown number killed

Boulevard de Charonne - 18 reported killed

Boulevard Voltaire - one killed

Rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi - five killed

Rue Alibert - 14 killed

Guardian service, Reuters