President says France will defend itself after at least 128 people killed in series of gun and bomb attacks across Paris
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a deadly wave of bombings and shootings across Paris that has left nearly 130 people dead and which the French president, François Hollande, denounced as an “act of war”.
Paris police reported that at least 128 people had been killed and 180 more injured – including 80 seriously – in the six attacks, the deadliest in Europe since the 2004 Madrid railway bombings. Eight militants also died.
The Islamist terror group said it had dispatched jihadis wearing suicide bomb belts and carrying machine guns around the French capital on Friday night in a coordinated series of attacks intended to show France would remain one of its main targets as long as its present policies continued.
“France and those who follow her voice must know that they remain the main target of Islamic State and that they will continue to smell the odour of death for having led the crusade, for having dared to insult our prophet, for having boasted of fighting Islam in France and striking Muslims in the caliphate with their planes,” the group said in a statement.
Hollande described the attacks as “cowardly” and “an act of war” that had been carefully “prepared, organised and planned from outside the country by Islamic State, but with help from inside. “Faced with war, the country must take appropriate action,” the president said. He did not say what form that action might take.
These were attacks “against France, against the values that we defend everywhere in the world, against what we are: a free country that means something to the whole planet,” Hollande said, calling for unity and courage and saying he would address an extraordinary meeting of parliament on Monday.
France would observe three days of official mourning, the president said. He said that in the meantime: ”all measures to protect our compatriots and our territory are being taken within the framework of the state of emergency” that has now been declared.
Two police officers told French media a Syrian passport was found on the body of one of the suicide bombers, but no identities or nationalities have been released officially. No arrests had been made by Saturday morning and it was not clear if any suspected gunmen were still on the loose. Police said they were were screening hours of CCTV footage from the six locations where the attacks took place.
An extra 1,500 soldiers were mobilised to reinforce police in Paris, Hollande’s office said. All sports events were cancelled on Saturday in the capital, while access to public facilities such as museums and swimming pools was restricted and several metro stationd remained closed.
In southern Germany, the Bavarian state premier, Horst Seehofer, said there was “reason to believe” that a man arrested last week during a routine motorway check with ”many machine guns, revolvers and explosives” in his car might possibly be linked to the attacks.
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