Harris, French PM lay wreaths six years on from Paris terror attacks
PARIS: US Vice President Kamala Harris and French Prime Minister Jean Castex laid wreaths at a Paris cafe and France’s national football stadium Saturday, six years since deadly terror attacks that left 130 people dead.
The attacks by three separate teams of Islamic State group jihadists on the night of November 13, 2015 were the worst in France since World War II.
Gunmen mowed down 129 people in front of cafes and at a concert hall in the capital, while a bus driver was killed after suicide bombers blew themselves up at the gates of the stadium in its suburbs.
Harris, closing a four-day trip to France, placed a bouquet of white flowers in front of a plaque honouring the victims outside a Paris cafe.
Castex attended a minute of silence at the Stade de France football stadium, along with Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, before laying wreaths at the sites of the other attacks inside Paris.
In front of the Bataclan concert hall, survivors and relatives of the victims listened to someone read out the names of each of the 90 people killed during a concert there six years ago.
Public commemorations of the tragedy were called off last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The marathon trial, the biggest in France’s modern legal history, is expected to last until May 2022. The commemorations included a minute of silence at a second football stadium, the Parc des Princes, before the evening kick-off of the FranceKazakhstan match.
Fifteen minutes into the game, a group of supporters unfurled a banner in tribute to the victims of the attacks. It read: “To our 131 stars of November 13”.
It was 15 minutes into a football match between France and Germany at the Stade de France that three suicide bombers blew themselves up in 2015, launching the attacks.
Then-president Francois Hollande was among the 80,000strong crowd, before he was discreetly whisked away to avoid triggering mass panic.