Paris rocked by explosions and shootouts leaving more than 140 dead
- 9 years ago
France declared a state of emergency and sealed its borders Friday evening after a series of apparently coordinated terrorist attacks struck at sites across Paris, leaving at least 140 people dead and scenes of horror and carnage outside a soccer stadium, at cafés and inside a concert hall.
The attacks on half a dozen targets spawned panic and chaos in a city where residents and tourists had only minutes earlier been enjoying a cool and quiet November evening.
As the security forces began their assault on the gunmen at the theater, a Guardian journalist on the scene tweeted that medical staff were running toward it, carrying dozens of empty stretchers.
The attacks were the worst in France in modern memory, and once again traumatized a country still reeling from three days of terror in January, when Islamist militants killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, left four hostages dead at a kosher supermarket and fatally shot a police officer.
The attacks on half a dozen targets spawned panic and chaos in a city where residents and tourists had only minutes earlier been enjoying a cool and quiet November evening.
As the security forces began their assault on the gunmen at the theater, a Guardian journalist on the scene tweeted that medical staff were running toward it, carrying dozens of empty stretchers.
The attacks were the worst in France in modern memory, and once again traumatized a country still reeling from three days of terror in January, when Islamist militants killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, left four hostages dead at a kosher supermarket and fatally shot a police officer.