Targets ranged from stadium to pizzeria
LUCKY ESCAPE: A French policeman assists a blood-covered survivor near the Bataclan concert hall, one of the sites targeted in a series of attacks in Paris. French President François Hollande described Friday’s events as unprecedented those people down, they drove away very slowly, very calmly.”
From there, according to the policeman, the militants launched another attack, this time on La Belle Equipe bar in rue de Charonne. At least 19 people died after the terrace was sprayed with bullets.
David Hadjadje, 31, a tour leader who lives nearby, said: “Some of the people were drunk — it was after all a Friday night — and they didn’t understand what was going on. I said: ‘Get out of here, get inside’.”
Little more than a mile from the restaurants, the US rock group Eagles of Death Metal were playing to a full house of 1 500 people at the Bataclan in Boulevard Voltaire. Most were young Parisians in their twenties and thirties.
An hour after the band took to the stage, black-clad gunmen wielding AK-47s and wearing suicide vests stormed into the hall and fired calmly and methodically at hundreds of screaming concert-goers.
They began a siege that would last around two-and-a-half hours. Three of the militants blew up their explosive belts as heavily armed anti-terror police ended the siege. A fourth was shot by officers.
At first, many who heard the shots thought it was part of the act. Within minutes the concert hall would become “a bloodbath”, according to one witness. A video filmed by a French newspaper journalist on a cellphone shows terrified concertgoers fleeing the venue.
The gunmen shot their victims in the back, killing some at point-blank range before reloading their guns and firing again, a witness said.
An eighth attacker exploded his suicide vest at a restaurant in the boulevard Voltaire, near the Bataclan. Another person was seriously injured.
A third blast took place near the Stade de France, this time near a McDonald’s restaurant.
The boom caused terror among spectators who had already been attempting to flee the stadium following the first two explosions. The match had continued, with many attributing the initial noises to fireworks, but word soon spread of what had taken place outside the stadium, as people read updates on their cellphones.
For Parisians, part of the terror was the deliberate, indiscriminate targeting of, as one 27-year-old put it, “innocent people going about their lives”.
Quentin, who works for an online company in Paris, heard on Saturday how his oldest friend was shot multiple times at the Bataclan.
He said: “It’s so shocking. When [the attack at the satirical newspaper in January] Charlie Hebdo happened, it was a specific, targeted attack. But this time it’s terrifying because it is random, innocent people going about their lives. Young people out drinking and socialising and hurting no one.” — © The Sunday Telegraph, London THE string of co-ordinated attacks in and around Paris late on Friday left more than 120 people dead, in the worst such violence in France’s history.
The assailants struck at least six venues, ranging from the Stade de France football stadium to a pizzeria.
Some 1 500 people were packed into the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris for a concert by the US band Eagles of Death Metal.
About an hour after the band took to the stage, the hall was turned into “a bloodbath”, according to a radio reporter. Black-clad gunmen with AK47s stormed in and fired calmly and methodically at hundreds of screaming concertgoers.
Three loud explosions were heard outside France’s national stadium during a friendly international football match between France and Germany.
At least four people died outside the venue, which staged the 1998 World Cup final, and several others were seriously hurt.
One of the explosions was near a McDonald’s restaurant on the fringes of the stadium.
At least one of the two explosions in rue Jules Rimet was a suicide bomb attack.
French President François Hollande, who was at the game, was immediately evacuated.
The two sides played on to the end.
Afterwards, bewildered fans poured on to the pitch while waiting for the exits to be declared secure.
Further east, on rue de Charonne, 18 people were killed, with one witness saying a Japanese restaurant and nearby cafe were the main targets. “There was blood everywhere.”
The terrace of a Cambodian restaurant, Le Petit Cambodge, was the scene of another attack, in which at least 12 people were killed.
What was so chilling was that, once the terrorists got back into their car after gunning those people down, they drove away very slowly We will do everything to help in the hunt for the perpetrators and those behind them —
“We heard the sound of guns, 30-second bursts. It was endless. We thought it was fireworks,” resident Pierre Montfort said.
A few hundred metres from the Bataclan, the Casa Nostra pizzeria was targeted. Five people were killed by attackers wielding automatic rifles, according to a witness. “There were at least five dead around me . . . I was very lucky.”
One of the attackers died when he detonated his suicide vest near the Bataclan. — AFP