Paris attacks suspect Abdeslam captured in Brussels

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, was wounded and captured in a dramatic raid by armed police in the Belgian capital on Friday.

Abdeslam, 26, and four other suspects were arrested in the gritty Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, where the Franco-Moroccan allegedly helped plan the November 13 attacks in which 130 people died and 350 were injured.

Abdeslam was lightly wounded in the leg, prosecutors said. France said it would swiftly seek his extradition.

"The battle against terrorism does not end tonight, even though this is a victory," French President Francois Hollande told a news conference in Brussels with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.

"I think of the victims of November 13, because Salah Abdeslam was directly linked to the preparation, the organization and unfortunately the perpetration of these attacks."

Hollande, whose embattled presidency will be defined by his response to the worst terror attacks on French soil, said Paris would request Abdeslam's extradition from Belgium "as rapidly as possible."

Michel, who rushed out of an EU summit for a crisis meeting with Hollande, said Abdeslam's capture was "extremely important in the battle for democracy against this abominable form of extremism."

The two leaders received the congratulations of US President Barack Obama who reaffirmed a "shared commitment" to "degrading and destroying" Islamic State.

Also arrested was a man known under the fake name of Amine Choukri who also used a false Syrian name, Monir Ahmed Alaaj.

Abdeslam and the so-called Choukri were fingerprinted by police in Germany on October 5, one month before the attacks.

Choukri could also be a so-called Soufiane Kayal who was pulled over by police on the Austrian border with Hungary in September, again with Abdeslam.

The only man known for sure to be still be on the run is Mohamed Abrini who was filmed with Abdeslam two days before the attacks at a filling station on a motorway close to Paris.

Last survivor
Former small-time criminal Abdeslam is believed to be the last surviving member of the 10-man jihadist team that carried out attacks on the Bataclan rock venue, restaurants, bars and the Stade de France stadium.

He apparently fled by car to his hometown Brussels the day after the rampage, having refused to blow himself up, and is believed to have spent much if not all of the subsequent four months in the city.

His brother Brahim carried out one of the suicide bomb attacks in Paris and was buried in a quiet ceremony in Brussels on Thursday, the day before Salah was captured.

Prosecutors said special forces raided a house in Molenbeek on Friday because of evidence found in an operation in Brussels on Tuesday, in which a Paris-linked suspect died in a gun battle with police and two other people escaped.

One of Abdeslam's fingerprints was found at the scene of Tuesday's raid, sparking the huge manhunt that led to his capture.

A witness told AFP the operation began at around 1530 GMT when dozens of police cars swooped into the rundown Molenbeek neighborhood.

"I heard about three or four shots fired, but they were muffled, as if taking place indoors," said Karim, an Oxfam charity employee who lives in the largely Muslim Molenbeek.

Footage in Belgian media appeared to show a white-hooded Abdeslam being dragged to a waiting police car by armed special forces officers.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one, and has been criticized for alleged blunders that let the perpetrators slip under the radar.

Paris network 'much wider'
With Belgium having arrested a series of people over links with Abdeslam, Hollande said many more were involved in the Paris attacks than originally believed.

"We realize that there were many more people than we at first thought," Hollande said.

Investigators believe Abdeslam hired one of he cars used in the attacks and then used it to drive suicide bombers to the Stade de France with the task then of blowing himself up.

But he apparently backed out, and an explosives-filled suicide vest was later found in Paris in a region that mobile phone signals indicated he had been in.

Police believe he fled across the border the next morning. Several people have been arrested on suspicion of helping him and one of his fingerprints was found in December at different Brussels apartment.

The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris in November.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was last week buried quietly in the same cemetery as Abdeslam's brother.

Both had links to Molenbeek, a largely immigrant district which has been a hotbed of Islamist violence for decades.

Abdeslam and his brother had run a bar in the area until it was shut down by the authorities a few weeks before the Paris attacks.

Belgian authorities have meanwhile identified the man killed in the raid on Tuesday linked to Abdeslam as Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid, 35, who was living illegally in Belgium.

Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and an IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.

He was reportedly on a list of IS fighters leaked last week as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Prosecutors also said he was wanted in connection with the Paris attacks.

source: interaksyon.com

Prepaid cards: Help for financially excluded or finance for terrorists?

PARIS - Prepaid payment cards were seen as a positive development, helping those excluded from the banking system and providing a convenient financial tool, but their use in the Paris terror attacks has revealed a troubling dark side.

The attackers used an anonymous prepaid card to rent hotel rooms outside Paris the night before the November 13 strikes that killed 130 people, according to Tracfin, the French body tasked with combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

It was a way to avoid being detected by intelligence agencies.

Prepaid cards have been one of the fastest growing segments of non-cash payments in recent years, and now authorities are concerned they may have become a tool that criminals use to keep their activities hidden and launder their funds.

Stamped with the Visa or MasterCard logo and protected with a PIN code, the cards allow users to withdraw funds at ATMs, as well as make purchases in stores and online.

However, unlike traditional debit cards, they must be charged in advance with funds.
They also don't bear a person's name, and if the amounts are not too large, no name is ever linked with the card.

In Europe it is currently possible to use without showing identification non-rechargeable cards for payments of up to 250 euros ($265) or up to 2,500 euros per year for rechargeable cards.

Benefits, gifts, wages

With online bill payments becoming more the norm, as well as the surge in online shopping, access to a payment card of some sort has become crucial in many countries. 

In the United States, they have become ubiquitous as many government benefits are now disbursed to prepaid cards. Some $148 billion was paid out that way last year according to the US Federal Reserve, although cards have to be registered to receive benefit payments.

And more and more US companies have begun issuing their employees prepaid cards to pay wages, thus cutting expenses related to using cheques and avoiding problems with workers who don't have a bank account.

Non-rechargeable cards have gained popularity as gift certificates, with companies also using them to entice or reward clients.

Volkswagen, for example, is offering US owners of its cars caught up in its emission cheating scandal a $500 prepaid Visa card.

In France, prepaid cards have found a niche with parents, as even minors can use them for payments.

"This allows parents to control the finances of their children," says France's Banque Postale, which has offered the cards since 2008.

A survey by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that a majority of low-income US users of prepaid cards also saw them as a means to control their spending, and avoid stiff overdraft fees that banks charge on traditional cards.

It is hard to say just how popular the cards have become in Europe as authorities don't break out payments by debit or prepaid cards.

However, a 2014 survey by the Bank of Italy found that nearly 17 percent of households had used prepaid cards, or about one in four that used payment cards.

Consulting firm CapGemini, in its latest publicly available report on the sector, estimated that prepaid cards accounted for 11.4 billion transactions worldwide in 2012, or nearly 4 percent of the total.

Untraceable

When issued by banks in Europe, the prepaid cards are usually linked to a bank account, thus making recharging convenient and ensuring transactions are traceable.

But EU directives aiming to boost competition opened up the sector to firms outside the banking sector, and 48 were registered, for instance, at the end of 2014 in France.

These companies have been behind the mushrooming of prepaid cards for sale in supermarkets and newsagents.

Available to anyone at least 18 years of age, some of these cards can be recharged with cash at newsagents and used to make transfers abroad.

And all that without having to show an ID.

That is why Bruno Dalles, the head of Tracfin, the French body tasked with combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism, said this past week he would seek to have prepaid card transactions "appear on our radar".

Anonymous prepaid cards "are used in the underground economy, in organised crime," said Dalles. "It is a tool which replaces cash, which is very discrete, untraceable. That is something we need to change."

French authorities have said they plan to reduce the amounts that cards may be charged with before identification becomes mandatory by decree early in 2016.

But if authorities want to fully eliminate the risk of their use by extremist groups,  "...identification should be needed from the first euro", said Frederic Jeannin, chief executive of Ticket Surf, a firm which provides online payment services.

He believes that part of the problem is that firms operating throughout Europe are only monitored in their home base.

Another is that prepaid card issuers also have no idea what the card is used for. When a charge comes through, the issuer sees only the merchant's bank.

Ticket Surf works directly with websites, which means they can monitor payments and shut off sites they suspect to be laundering money.

"It is important to have financial regulations but it is also important that financial institutions pay attention," said Jeannin.

source: interaksyon.com

Stars at American Music Awards have Paris on their minds

LOS ANGELES — It's the American Music Awards, but guests had Paris on their minds.

Celine Dion performed the French classic made famous by Edith Piaf, "L'Hymne a L'Amour," in front of a string section and a montage of images of famous Paris sites. She raised her hand triumphantly in the air at the song's conclusion, a photo of the Eiffel Tower behind her.

In introducing the songstress, Jared Leto said the terrorist attacks in Paris and Mali this month have "changed the world forever" and scarred its population.

"Tonight we honor the victims of the unimaginable violence that has taken place in Paris and around the world," Leto said. "The entire world matters, and peace is possible."

Charlie Puth, who locked lips with Meghan Trainor for an extended kiss onstage, said he happened to be near the site of the Paris attacks a few weeks before they happened and felt his heart break at the news.

"I want to write a song for Paris," said the 23-year-old entertainer, whose song "See You Again" was nominated twice at the AMAs. "I don't want to write another 'See You Again' for Paris, but I want to write a song specifically for Paris."


The lead singer of 5 Seconds of Summer, which performed during the show, said the band wants to help its fans make sense of the most recent terrorist attacks.

"This is the first time any of them have experienced a tragedy like this, so it's important for a band like us to articulate ourselves properly so they understand what's happening," singer Luke Hemmings said. "What we sing about is important, and it will change what we write about in the future. We have a young fan base, and were almost the communicators of what's going on in the world."

Skrillex, who won collaboration of the year for "Where Are U Now" with Diplo and Justin Bieber, didn't mention Paris specifically, but said, "There's so much negative stuff in the world right now that it's up to us to be positive right now."

source: philstar.com

'Facebook DISABLED my account,' says woman named ISIS

MANILA - There's a woman from San Francisco who recently reported that the social media network Facebook disabled – but later reinstated – her account because of her name: Isis.

The name happens to be the same as the popular moniker of ISIS – The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), that is currently hogging the news headlines in the wake of its waves of terror attacks in Paris.

In the Tech News section of the British-published Express (http://www.express.co.uk), Aaron Brown wrote on Wednesday (November 18): "Isis Anchalee claims her profile was removed by Facebook because of her name."

Brown observed that the news comes days after Facebook rolled out the ability to overlay the French flag on users' profile pictures, to show solidarity with France.

 

ISIS is also known as The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), described by various sources as a Wahhabi/Salafi jihadist extremist militant group, self-proclaimed to be a caliphate and Islamic state, led by and mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Iraq and Syria.

"Isis Anchalee – an engineer based in San Francisco, California – claims Facebook disabled her account because she shares her name with a popular abbreviation for Islamic State," Brown added in his report.

Read it here.

In the wake of the terror implications, Brown noted that Facebook had been "hard at work trying to eradicate the presence of Islamic State, dubbed ISIS, on the hugely popular US social network.

"Unfortunately the San Francisco engineer appears to have been mixed up in its efforts."

Anchalee was reportedly asked to prove her identity three times to Facebook.

"As a result, Facebook has since reinstated Isis Anchalee's profile on the hugely successful social network."

source: interaksyon.com

Anonymous hacking network declares war on IS

PARIS, France — The Anonymous hacking network declared war on the Islamic State in a Youtube video Monday, sparking a combative response from the jihadist group’s affiliates, a security expert said.

The “hacktivist” collective vowed vengeance for attacks in Paris on Friday, claimed by IS, that left 129 dead and hundreds injured, some of them critically.

“Anonymous everywhere in the world is going to hunt you down,” a hooded figure in black, wearing the group’s signature Guy Fawkes mask said in French.

It was not possible to verify its authenticity, but the statement and video had the hallmarks of the network, known for mounting cyberattacks against government and corporate websites.

“Our country, France, was hit in Paris on November 13 around 2200 (2100 GMT) by multiple terrorist attacks claimed by you, the Islamic State,” the figure said in a gravelly, computer-altered voice.

“We are going to launch the biggest operation every mounted against you — get ready for a multitude of cyberattacks. War has been declared.”

Counterproductive

The video, posted the day after the attacks, had more than 1.3 million views by Monday afternoon.

In an apparent riposte, a message posted on the Twitter address of the messaging service Telegram calls on Islamic State affiliates to secure their Internet communications.

“The #Anonymous hackers threatened… that they will carry out a major hack operation on the Islamic state (idiots),” the message said.

“So U should follow the instructions below to avoid being hacked,” it continued, advising followers to avoid opening unknown links and to frequently change computers and phones.

Charlie Winter, a researcher in transnational jihadism at UK-based think tank Quilliam, affirmed the message’s authenticity in a tweet.

“@GroupAnon, IS didn’t like your declaration of war,” he wrote, referring to one of Anonymous’ Twitter addresses.

“Here’s what they’re saying on @telegram. Use it against them.”

French cybersecurity expert Olivier Laurelli warned the Anonymous action against the jihadist organisation could interfere with police efforts to identify and track its members.

“It’s counterproductive,” he told AFP. Actions that force Islamic State operatives “to close accounts just renders police investigators blind and dead for certain things.”

It is helpful, for example, to know that certain accounts are based in France, Syria or Iraq, he said.

Being able to identify connections and communications between individuals is also critical. But if Anonymous forces accounts to shut down, investigators are left with dead ends.

Besdies, the impact is only temporary, he added. “An account closed here, is just another one opened over there,” he said.

The nearly three-minute Anonymous clip opens with thundering orchestral music, displaying the Anonymous logo of a suited figure with a question mark for a head.

The speaker, seated like a news presenter, is flanked by the logo on one side and black-and-white news footage of the aftermath of the attacks, on the other.

France led a minute’s silence observed around the world on Monday in memory of the victims of the worst-ever terror attacks on French soil.

President Francois Hollande and his cabinet, all dressed in black, bowed their heads at the Sorbonne University in Paris, surrounded by scores of students.

The attacks — at six locations in and near Paris — came less than 11 months after jihadists struck satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, killing 17.

source: interaksyon.com

France police raid homes, vow it's 'just the beginning'

PARIS - Police raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight following the Paris attacks, and a source close to the investigation said a Belgian national in Syria was suspected of orchestrating Friday's mayhem.

Prosecutors said one of the killers had been stopped and fingerprinted in Greece last month, fuelling speculation the Islamic State had taken advantage of the recent influx of refugees fleeing the Middle East to slip militants into Europe.

The Paris carnage, which killed 129 people, has led to calls for the European Union to close its borders to asylum seekers.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned France could be hit by new violence but said the Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks in retaliation for French airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, would never win.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told journalists on Monday police arrested 23 people and seized arms including rocket launchers in 168 raids overnight. Another 104 people were put under house arrest, he said.

"Let this be clear to everyone, this is just the beginning, these actions are going to continue," Cazeneuve said.

French warplanes pounded Islamic State positions in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa late Sunday -- its biggest such strike since it started assaults as part of a US-led mission launched in 2014.

The investigation into the coordinated Paris attacks, the worst atrocity in France since World War Two, led swiftly to Belgium after police discovered that two of the cars used by the militants had been rented in the Brussels region.

By Sunday, Belgian officials said they had arrested seven people in Brussels, while another man -- one of three brothers believed to have been involved in the plot -- was being hunted.

A source close to the investigation said Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, currently in Syria, was suspected of having ordered the Paris operation. "He appears to be the brains behind several planned attacks in Europe," the source told Reuters.

French prosecutors say they have identified five of the seven suicide attackers who died on Friday. Four were French, while the fifth man was fingerprinted in Greece in October and was possibly Syrian.

Valls said that since this summer, French intelligence services had prevented five attacks.

"We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries," Valls told RTL radio. "We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time."

Syrian connection

The death toll was revised back down to 129 following a counting error. Dozens of people remain in intensive care.

France has declared three days of national mourning and President Francois Hollande will make a rare address to the joint upper and lower houses of parliament later in the day at the Palace of Versailles, just outside Paris.

Schools in Paris re-opened on Monday, and many museums were due to open their doors in the afternoon after a 48-hour shutdown, but some popular tourist sites, including Disneyland, remained closed.

Police have named just two French attackers -- Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris, and Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy. Media named the two other French assailants as Bilal Hadfi and Ibrahim Abdeslam.

The man stopped in Greece in October was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad. Police said they were still checking to see if the document was authentic, but said the dead man's fingerprints matched those on record in Greece.

Greek officials said the passport holder had crossed from Turkey to the Greek islands last month and then registered for asylum in Serbia before heading north, following a route taken by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers this year.

The news revived a furious row within the European Union on how to handle the flood of refugees. Top Polish and Slovak officials poured cold water on an EU plan to relocate asylum seekers across the bloc, saying the violence underlined their concerns about taking in Muslim refugees.

Britain announced on Monday it would boost its intelligence agency staff by 15 percent and more than double spending on aviation security to defend against Islamist militants plotting attacks from Syria.

A source in British Prime Minister David Cameron's office said police had foiled one attack against the country last month.

Valls said the French authorities would use every means at their disposal to counter the Islamist threat, adding that mosques harboring extremists would be shuttered and foreigners expelled if they "held unacceptable views against the republic". (Additional reporting by Matthias Blamont, John Irish, Leigh Thomas, Ingrid Melander, Michael Nienaber, Marine Pennetier, Robert-Jan Bartunek and Claire Watson)

source: interaksyon.com

G20 SUMMIT | Paris attacks, Syria divide reshape world leaders' agenda

ANTALYA, Turkey - World leaders joined a heavily-guarded summit in Turkey on Sunday to forge a united front against jihadist violence after the Paris gun and bomb assaults but facing stark divisions over conflict-riven Syria.

US President Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin of Russia, China's President Xi Jinping and other leaders gathered at the Mediterranean resort ofAntalya two days after the Paris attacks claimed byIslamic State jihadists that killed at least 129 people.

The Paris killings darkened the mood of the summit of the Group of 20 top world economies, with security and the Syrian conflict now eclipsing an economic agenda that will also deal with the spreading refugee crisis, climate change and tax avoidance.

Several sources told AFP that the leaders were working on a rare separate statement to denounce the Paris attacks and terrorism, urged on by host President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said the summit agenda was now "very different" given the massacre in Paris.

"We need to lead an international fight within a coalition against collective acts of terrorism," Erdogansaid on the eve of the summit after meeting withChina's Xi, who described terrorism as "a common enemy of humanity".

The gathering, which will take place without French leader Francois Hollande who remains home to lead his shaken country, offers the first possibility of a meeting between Obama and Putin since Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria.

The West suspects the Russian bombardment is aimed at propping up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, a difference that risks driving a wedge through the summit, which officially kicks off at midday Sunday (1000 GMT).

The White House has said no formal summit is so far scheduled between the pair, whose icy body language at previous encounters has grabbed as many headlines as their comments.

Erdogan wants to use the summit to cement his status as a global leader after winning a resounding victory in an election last month, held three weeks after a twin suicide bombing in Ankara that killed 102 people and was blamed on Islamic State militants.

But while even Putin and Obama are likely to have no trouble standing together in shared abhorrence of terrorism, overcoming differences on Syria will prove far trickier.

Heightened security

All musical events, including at the official dinner on Sunday night, have been cancelled as a mark of respect for the Paris victims and Turkish state media said the already tight security at the summit was stepped up.

The leaders will probably struggle to find common ground over the Syria crisis, with host Turkey deeply opposed to Russia's air strikes and finding only a lukewarm reaction so far to its proposal for a safe zone free of Islamic State jihadists to be created inside Syria as a haven for refugees.

"I pray and hope that G20 will provide a platform whereby all of these issues can be discussed openly and then we can understand each other," Erdogan said.

Top diplomats gathered in Vienna on Saturday agreed a fixed calendar for Syria that would see a transition government in six months and elections in 18 months but failed to agree on the future of Assad.

Yet officials in Antalya have insisted that they will not allow terrorism to derail the summit.

The refugee crisis is a key topic, with host Turkey housing some 2.2 million Syrian refugees from the conflict but the European Union wanting Ankara to do more to prevent migrants undertaking risky boat crossings to the EU.

Discussions on climate change will assume greater importance than usual coming just ahead of a UN conference in Paris that aims to agree a legally binding global climate treaty.

Other key guests at the summit include Saudi King Salman, whose delegation according to the Hurriyet daily has booked 546 hotel rooms at a cost of up to 15,000 euros ($16,115) each and hired 400 luxury cars.

Focus beyond economies

Although the G20 usually focuses on economic issues, the fight against terrorism was already expected to be on the agenda. The summit comes two weeks after a suspected bomb attack on a Russian airliner killed 224 people in the Sinai Peninsula.

It also comes just over a month after two suspected Islamic State suicide bombers blew themselves up at a peace rally in the Turkish capital Ankara, killing more than 100 people in the worst such attack in the country.

Events such as the attacks in Paris made it crucial for the world's top economies to stand shoulder to shoulder at the summit, China's vice finance minister said.

"We must work together, we must enhance our solidarity," Zhu Guangyou told a news conference in the coastal resort of Belek, where leaders began gathering for the summit.

Speaking in Vienna, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was growing consensus among global powers that they had to work together to confront Islamic State.

Turkey's battles

The G20 summit takes place just 500 km (310 miles) from Syria, where a 4-1/2-year conflict has transformed Islamic State militants into a global security threat and spawned Europe's largest migration flows since World War Two.

Erdogan condemned the Paris killings and pointed to Turkey's own long battle with domestic security threats, which include its fight with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants in its southeast and recent bomb attacks linked to Islamic State.

Ankara sees a growing threat to its security from radical Islamists. Security sources said the Turkish army killed four Islamic State militants when they came under attack from across the Syrian border on Saturday. One official said the frequency of such attacks was on the rise.

Turkish officials said Erdogan would push in bilateral meetings with leaders including Obama for more coordinated and decisive action against Islamic State in Syria.

But he would also emphasize Turkey's opposition to U.S. support for Kurdish rebels who are fighting the radical Sunni insurgents, they said. Turkey says these rebels have close ties to the PKK, considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union as well as by Ankara.

"Terrorism has no nationality or religion. All terrorism is bad, we must leave aside the feeling that our terrorist is bad and your terrorist is good," Erdogan said.

NATO-member Turkey opened its air bases in July to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, but critics say it woke up late to the threat.

Following January's attacks in Paris by gunmen on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the wife of one of the gunmen fled through Turkey to IS-controlled Syria.

Turkey stepped up its fight against Islamic State in July, but the campaign has largely seen air strikes and military action against PKK fighters in Turkey and northern Iraq.

On Friday night Turkish jets pounded PKK targets in northern Iraq, where the group's headquarters are located.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition HDP, said the Paris attacks were a result of the world's failure to deal with Islamic State (ISIL).

"The world, including Turkey, has not undertaken an effective, coordinated effort against ISIL. Just the opposite, everyone used ISIL, or elements within it, for their own interests," he said at an event in Istanbul.

source: interaksyon.com

Scenes of horror as a Paris night becomes a bloodbath

PARIS — The assailants' weapons were those of war: automatic rifles and suicide belts of explosives. The killing was indiscriminate, spread across a swath of the city, in at least six different sites. An ordinary Friday night in Paris transformed into a bloodbath. The word Parisians used over and over as they tried to make sense of the horror was "carnage."

At the packed Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris, the attackers opened fire on a crowd waiting to hear American rock band Eagles of Death Metal perform. One witness told France Info radio he heard them yell "Allahu Akbar" — God is great in Arabic — as they started their killing spree and took hostages. The city's police chief, Michel Cadot, said the assailants also wore explosive belts, which they detonated.

About a mile (1.5 kilometers) from there, attackers sprayed gunfire at the Belle Equipe bar, busy as ever on a Friday night with patrons unwinding from their week. One witness, also speaking to French radio, said the dead and wounded dropped "like flies" and that "there was blood everywhere. You feel very alone in moments like that."

The preliminary death toll there appeared to be 18 dead, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. White sheets were laid over bodies.

To the north, loud explosions reverberated around the national stadium, packed with some 80,000 fans watching France beat Germany in a soccer exhibition match. One of the loud detonations in the chill air so startled French player Patrice Evra that he paused in mid-run, seemingly lost, and kicked away the ball.

A police union official, Gregory Goupil, said the two explosions were suicide attacks and a bombing that killed at least three people — near two of the entrances to the stadium and a McDonalds. The stadium was the first site targeted.


From there, the wave of killings quickly spread.

There were 14 dead on one street, five on another, Molins said. The spread of the killings added to the confusion and made a coherent picture slow to form. But the shock was instantaneous, as was the understanding that this was terror and killing on a scale unseen in Paris since World War II.

"The terrorists, the assassins, sprayed the outsides of several cafes with machine guns and went inside," Cadot, the police chief, said. "So there were victims in terrible and atrocious states in numerous places."

Pierre-Henri Lombard was dining in a restaurant in the trendy neighborhood when he heard sounds like the fireworks for France's Bastille Day national holiday.

Then the panic began.

"Waiters went outside and said it was a shooting. We saw dozens of people rundown the street, a couple were bleeding," he said.

As police, soldiers and the emergency services sprang into action, sirens wailing, helicopters whirring overhead, medical personnel started reporting for work of their own accord to help treat the injured. Five subway lines were shut down entirely, and Paris police told people to stay at home and avoid going out unless absolutely necessary.

At the Bataclan, police launched an assault to free hostages. Haggard-looking survivors were bused away.

At the stadium, fans streamed onto the pitch after the match, preferring the relative safety of inside of the stadium to the chaos outside. Police forensic officers dressed in white scoured the blast sites for evidence.

French President Francois Hollande was quickly evacuated from the stadium and soon after declared a state of emergency.

___

Greg Keller, Samuel Petrequin and Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report.

source: philstar.com