The
City of Light’s night of darkness
Terror
attacks bring the sounds of sirens and sadness to Paris.
By PIERRE BRIANÇON
11/14/15, 2:14 AM CET Updated 11/14/15, 2:30 AM CET
PARIS — In a train
arriving late Friday night into Gare de l’Est, the big station of
Eastern Paris, stunned passengers were exchanging empathic looks
while the lucky ones who managed to get some kind of signal shared
their smartphones with their neighbors.
There were looks,
more than words — and then only to announce the latest horrific
event. Explosions at Stade de France. Hostages at the Bataclan. Maybe
Les Halles.
Like the people of
New York and Washington in 2001, Mumbai in 2008 and Paris itself just
10 months ago with the deadly Charlie Hebdo attacks, the people of
this city entered the surreal and horrifying world of senseless,
terrorist violence. The sound of explosions and sirens contrasted
with what many Parisians described as the eerie silence of an
ever-vibrant city’s normally bustling Friday night streets.
Paris saw its first
mandatory curfew since 1944.
“It’s absolutely
dead,” Weather Channel managing editor Sam Champion, in town for a
climate special with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, told MSNBC.
“You don’t see anything move that doesn’t have a flashing light
on it.”
A few minutes before
the French police launched an assault on the iconic Bataclan concert
hall, near the Place de la République (and a mere 200 meters from
the building where the Charlie Hebdo murders took place), stunned
passers-by were restricted by a police cordon, while people living in
the neighborhood were trying to get help from policemen on how best
to get home.
Subway stops became
armed camps, with three or four policemen on every platform.
The overwhelming
sound of sirens — police cars and vans, firefighters, emergency
medics, Red Cross ambulances — echoed everywhere. And of course
with smartphones out, people snapping pictures or videos . . . but
with gravity, sadness or horror in their eyes.
Parisian families
were frantically calling each other or trying to. “Where are you
now?” “Go home, don’t take the subway, don’t stay in the
streets.”
Subway stations were
closing one after the other as the night advanced. First, a few
stations around Oberkampf — the one you get off when you go to a
Bataclan concert. Then number 3 and the whole number 5 line. Paris
was never as deserted on a Friday night. Taxis seemed to have
disappeared. People had to walk 1.5 kilometers to get the nearest
station on place de la Bastille, where a middle-aged woman was
looking lost, loaded with grocery bags, and looking to connect with
her fellow passengers to try to understand what she should do
tomorrow.
“I’ve always
said we’re in war,” she repeated, as if that explained
everything.
Parisians who
usually never talk to each other started socializing. I walked two
kilometers to the Bastille subway station with two new young friends
— one African teenager who was laughing seeing people running in
the streets (he thought it was fear, but they mostly wanted to be
able to catch the last subway) and another, of North African origin,
who was mostly asking me the best way to get to Bobigny, north of
Paris, since his subway line had been closed.
Just after 1 a.m.,
the lights of the Eiffel Tower were turned off to honor the dozens of
dead. For the City of Light, it was a night of darkness.
Authors:
Pierre Briançon
Scores
dead in Paris terrorist attacks
Multiple
attacks in central Paris, explosions at Stade de France and at least
100 killed at a concert hall.
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
11/13/15, 10:47 PM CET Updated 11/14/15, 2:59 AM CET
PARIS — Dozens of
people were killed in Paris on Friday night after gunmen opened fire
in multiple locations around the capital with Kalashnikov assault
rifles and set off explosions, in the worst terrorist attack in
France’s history.
President François
Hollande announced a national state of emergency and closed French
borders in a live TV address shortly after the attacks, adding that
he would convene a Defense Council on Saturday to coordinate France’s
response.
French television
and media outlets reported that at least 100 were killed at a concert
hall, and dozens more were dead following a coordinated attack at
about a half-dozen sites across the city.
Four of the
suspected attackers were among the dead, including three who were
inside the Bataclan concert hall stormed by armed police and another
who launched a suicide attack near the Stade de France national
stadium, according to Agence France-Presse, which would be the first
time that a suicide attack had taken place on French soil.
“It’s a horror,”
President François Hollande said in an address on French television
last night, calling the attacks an act of “terrorism.”
“This is a
terrible ordeal that, once again, assails us. … Who are these
criminals? Who are these terrorists?” he said. “In the face of
terror France must be strong. It must be great, and the authorities
of state must be firm. We will be.”
The government
deployed an additional 1,500 soldiers to Paris, the Elysee Palace in
a statement.
The attacks,
unprecedented in scale and audacity, brought to life a nightmarish
scenario for French authorities which have been battling homegrown
Islamist extremism for years: multiple, simultaneous assaults by
heavily armed gunmen and bombers.
They marked the
third time that France has been hit by terrorism in 2015, including
the Charlie Hebdo assault in January, a beheading and a thwarted
attack in a Thalys train in August. Over the past few years hundreds
of French citizens have joined Islamist groups in Syria, straining
authorities’ ability to monitor all who return home — a group
that security officials consider particularly dangerous given their
wartime experience.
No particular group
had claimed responsibility for the attacks as of 1:30 a.m. Paris
time. But witness reports of attackers shouting “It’s for Syria”
brought to mind possible vengeance for French airstrikes being
carried out against ISIL targets in Syria.
Despite a high
terror alert level and troops deployed in sensitive sites across
France, the bar terraces, soccer stadium and concert hall where
attackers struck would have been lightly protected.
Three weeks before
world leaders were due to convene in Paris for the COP21 climate
change conference, the attack called into question any international
meeting in a country that has sealed itself off to thwart attacks and
catch any terrorist attempting to leave the country.
As an immediate
consequence of the attacks Hollande immediately called off his trip
Sunday to Turkey for a G20 summit; Paris’ Orly airport was closed
as well as schools and universities; and candidates in France’s
December regional election said they would suspend their campaigns.
“We expect to have
a lot of casualties at the Bataclan, we think there might be several
dozens of dead,” a Paris police source told POLITICO. “We are
trying to get more witnesses but a lot of people are in a state of
complete shock.”
“We are very
clearly facing terrorist attacks,” the police official said. “The
assailants are kamikaze.”
After midnight Paris
time, police assaulted the Bataclan concert hall in northern Paris,
in the 11th district. LCI television reported that three terrorists
were found dead inside, and cited a witness who called the scene “a
carnage.”
A witness told Le
Figaro that two men, armed and normally dressed, had entered the
Bataclan. Another witness cited by BFMTV said that the gunmen inside
the Bataclan had shouted “It’s for Syria, It’s for Syria”
while firing their weapons. One attacker shouted “Allahu akbar,”
God is great in Arabic, and fired into the crowd, a witness told
Agence France-Presse.
The French police
raised its terror alert level to “red alpha,” signaling multiple
attacks. It encouraged residents of Paris to stay indoors.
The coordinated
attacks began at 9:17 at the Stade de France, with up to three
explosions, and was followed minutes later by the shootings across a
popular neighborhood of Paris that was crowded on a Friday night.
Jonas Tylewski, a
German studying in France who was in the stadium, said many in the
crowd thought the explosions were fireworks, but soon police cars
started arriving at the scene.
“I could see a lot
of ambulances coming and leaving,” Tylewski said in an interview.
“It was pretty close to the stadium. A third detonation occurred
after a while.”
Mobile internet
connection in the stadium was very slow and stopped working
completely shortly after the match, he said. The crowd began to leave
the stadium but then people ran back in panic after hearing that
there were shootings outside, Tylewski said.
“Friends of mine
are still in the conflict area,” Tylewski said, citing the 10th and
11th Arrondissements. “The atmosphere is way worse than after
Charlie Hebdo,”
Hollande, who had
been at the Stade de France for a match between France and Germany,
was escorted out of the area and police set up a security cordon.
At least four bodies
lay motionless on the street on the Rue Bichat in the 10th district
and witnesses said they had seen two shooters or more firing with
Kalashnikov rifles before taking flight, daily Liberation cited a
correspondent on location as saying.
“There were
incessant shots,” a witness who was at the first shooting location
said on France24 television. “It sounded like firecrackers.”
President Barack
Obama condemned the attacks in Paris as an “outrageous attempt to
terrorize innocent civilians” and promised the people of France the
full support of the United States.
“This is not just
an attack on Paris … but this is an attack on all of humanity and
the universal values that we all share,” Obama told reporters at
the White House. “We stand together with them in the fight against
terrorism and extremism.”
Obama promised that
the U.S. will provide the government of France whatever assistance is
needed and to do whatever it takes to bring terrorists to justice.
Maia de la Baume in
France, Carmen Paun, and Laura Kayali in Brussels, and Eliza Collins
in Washington contributed reporting to this article.
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