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France has declared a national state of emergency and has closed its borders after at least 40 people were killed in multiple shootings in Paris.
At least 15 people were killed near the Bataclan arts centre, where up to 60 people are being held hostage. Explosions and gunfire are reported.
Three people were killed in an attack near the Stade de France, with some reports suggesting a suicide blast.
Paris authorities have urged people to stay indoors.
Military personnel are being deployed across Paris.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/13/455943961/violence-reported-in-paris
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/13/world/paris-shooting/index.html
Update #1 [BBC updates]:
Scores of people have been killed in multiple gun and bomb attacks in Paris
At least 100 people are reported to have died inside the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris
Others died in attacks near the Stade de France, where France were playing Germany, and at restaurants
France has declared a national state of emergency and has closed its borders
Paris residents have been asked to stay indoors and military personnel are being deployed across the city
[...] Reuters. quoting an un-named official at Paris City Hall, says the current death toll in Paris is around 140.
According to the Paris prosecutor, of the four assailants who died during the sidge at the Bataclan, three committed suicide by detonating explosive vests. The prosecutor has warned that some of their accomplices may "still be on the loose".
[...] Here is what French president François Hollande told reporters outside the Bataclan concert hall just now: "To all those who have seen these awful things, I want to say we are going to lead a war which will be pitiless. Because when terrorists are capable of committing such atrocities they must be certain that they are facing a determined France, a united France, a France that is together and does not let itself be moved, even if today we express infinite sorrow."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Saturday November 14 2015, @01:48AM
There's been about a million refugees into Europe this year.
Assuming that these 6 attacks were perpetrated by say a total of 20 people who all entered Europe as refugees, that would leave 999,980 refugees who weren't involved
If you want a coordinated attack why not do it en mass. Use 2000 terrorists willing to kill themselves and start 500 attacks across the west, from shootings at shopping malls to driving now a car into a crowd on the pavement.
The answer of course is there aren't 2000 people willing to do it. There aren't 200. The number of people willing to deliberately go out and mirder innocent men women and children is tiny compared with those that do it accidentally in cars. We don't ban cars, we certainly don't ban drivers.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday November 14 2015, @02:07AM
If you want a coordinated attack why not do it en mass.
You are correct. Every general knows that you have to always attack, with all your forces, no matter what the circumstances are, until you have no soldiers left to fight tomorrow. </sarc>
In this case, imagine that ISIS (or whoever stands behind - and there is someone, as the terror acts were organized) wants to terrorize the population. (Shocking, I know.) This is not achieved by one-time killing of many; one battle will be forgotten soon. But it can be achieved by killing of one citizen per day, as the losses will be fresh in people's memory.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday November 14 2015, @02:34AM
So major attacks on the west
2001
2003
2005
2015
Wake me up when you have evidence that there will be a continual campaign like the us funded bombing attacks on British children from the 70s til 90s.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday November 14 2015, @02:51AM
Ok. Note, however, that ISIS only now got able to emplace a large number of their soldiers within the EU, by masquerading them as refugees. The attack in January was done by Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, French citizens born in Paris, not by infiltrators from Libya or Syria or wherever. It's yet unknown who exactly performed the attack on 11/13/2015, and whether the new arrivals have anything to do with it.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 14 2015, @12:27PM
Disagree. There have been sporadic terror attacks over the past decade and more. More, there have been terror cells exposed throughout Europe in recent years. The terrorists have used European venues and resources to plan attacks around the world. Islamic terror groups are intertwined, of course. Former "Al Queda" groups have largely sworn allegiance to "ISIS" now. It isn't possible for you, me, or anyone to segregate one group's assets from another group's. The terrorists have infiltrated over a period of a couple decades, and they are taking action NOW, because France is involved in air raids in Iraq and Syria. Sleeper groups have been awakened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2iBZkODgxA [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday November 16 2015, @03:07AM
You imply some kind of command and control structure. I don't see that at all, and that's what makes fighting it so hard
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 16 2015, @03:31AM
Two things.
1. Somewhat like "sleeper cells" of the old Soviet days, a command structure isn't essential. Train highly motivated people, send them out into the world, and wait to see what they accomplish. You may additionally arrange for some signal to be sent openly, published in the personal ads, or on Facebook, or whatever.
2. Among the articles I've glanced at since I woke up this evening, was this: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/15/72-hours-before-paris-attacks-isis-linked-social-media-account-reveals-god-1219447939/?intcmp=trending [foxnews.com]
Regarding 2. - we have no idea how "hands on" the command structure was. Did the operatives merely communicate to the controllers that they had something planned, or did command plot the entire thing in detail? We may or may not learn more about that in days to come, but it is pretty certain that 8 or more random people didn't arrange this attack on the spur of the moment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @02:56AM
like the us funded bombing attacks on British children from the 70s til 90s.
Lol put down the pipe idjit.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Saturday November 14 2015, @05:23AM
like the us funded bombing attacks on British children from the 70s til 90s.
Lol put down the pipe idjit.
No, this is a real thing [washingtonpost.com].
I am talking about the sympathy for the Irish Republican Army that persisted for decades in some Irish American communities and is only now fading away. Like British Muslim support for Muslim extremist terrorism, Irish American support for Irish terrorism came in many forms. There were Irish Americans who waved the Irish flag once a year on St. Patrick's Day and admired the IRA's cause but felt queasy about the methods. There were Irish Americans who collected money for Catholic charities in Northern Ireland without condoning the IRA at all. There were also Irish Americans who, while claiming to be "aiding the families of political prisoners," were in fact helping to arm IRA terrorists. Throughout the 1970s, until Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asked President Ronald Reagan to stop them, they were the IRA's primary source of funding. And even after that they were widely tolerated.
I concede there is one major difference: The Irish terrorists were setting off their bombs across the ocean and not in New York or Boston, which somehow made the whole thing seem less real. But in Britain the explosions were real enough. In 1982 -- the year an IRA bomb killed eight people in Hyde Park -- four IRA men were arrested in New York after trying to buy surface-to-air missiles from an FBI agent. In 1984 -- the year the IRA tried to kill the whole British cabinet in Brighton -- an IRA plot to smuggle seven tons of explosives was foiled, an action that led to the arrests of several Americans. As recently as 1999, long after the IRA had declared its cease-fire, members of an IRA group connected to an American organization, the Irish Northern Aid Committee (Noraid), were arrested for gun-running in Florida.
The range of Americans who were unbothered by this sort of thing was surprisingly wide. Some were members of Congress, such as Republican Rep. Peter King of Long Island, who stayed with IRA supporters on visits to Northern Ireland and drank at a Belfast club called the Felons, whose members were all IRA ex-cons. Some were born in Ireland, such as Michael Flannery, Noraid's founder, who once said that "the more British soldiers sent home from Ulster in coffins, the better," and whose flattering obituary in 1995 described him as a man who "treated everyone he met with gentle respect." Some were Americans of Irish descent, such as Tom McBride, a businessman who is still the chairman of the Hartford chapter of Noraid, and who still refuses to condemn IRA terrorism. "I think they are protecting a segment of the population that needs to be protected," he told me over the phone.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday November 14 2015, @03:50AM
I'm not clear on what you mean. Are you saying that ISIS (or whoever these terrorists are) are terrible because they've mounted four major attacks on the West since 20001 while the US has never funded any kind of terrible terror like that, or are you saying that ISIS is not that bad when you consider Irish Americans funded the IRA's bombing attacks on Britons for decades? Because they did.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday November 14 2015, @07:54PM
Don't forget that the US refused to extradite IRA terrorists to the UK.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday November 15 2015, @02:12AM
Well when U.S. funded terrorists blew up my tiny home town in 1993, when the blew up the neighbouring city in 1996, it certainly was terrible. The IRA commited 131 terrorist incidents in in mainland britian in the first half of the 90s -- thats about 2 per month - that's a sustained attack. Not half a dozen in a decade.
As at least one of the 7 attackers on Friday were French, I'm not sure what you're going to do, ban the French from visiting Paris?
Now it's entirely possible that the attacks (which didn't need the refugee crisis to occur) were timed to stir up racial hatred, and attempt to persuade the world there's a "Muslim vs everyone else" war on, when there isn't, any more than there was an Ireland vs Britain war in the 80s and 90s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @07:19PM
Do you lock your doors at night? Very few people are criminals. Why stop them all from entering when so many are innocent?
The same wisdom should be applied to your country. Some bad people get in and hundreds die. It does not matter if 99.99% of the people you let in are innocent, you are facilitating mass murder by letting that last .01% in.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday November 14 2015, @10:05PM
Do you lock your doors at night?
Locking my door is a personal decision that affects myself and no one else.
It does not matter if 99.99% of the people you let in are innocent, you are facilitating mass murder by letting that last .01% in.
So be it. What you speak of now is national policy, which has a definite effect on countless people. What you seem to be advocating is collective punishment, which any truly free society should reject.
It is amazing how easy it to bring people to the government's side. The suckers will just beg for more safety and gladly surrender their liberties whenever there is some threat or an attack of some sort. That shows how much freedom means to them.