However a few rail and air services are expected to run. The theater attack took place near the Place de la Republique, not far from the office of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. It is far more reminiscent, given the numbers of victims and the sophistication of the attacks, of the terrorist assault on Mumbai, in India, in 2008; or of the killings during a four-day siege at the Westgate shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2013. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “I am deeply shocked by the horrific terrorist attacks across Paris tonight”.
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The Paris Prosecutor initially said at least 153 people had been killed, but on Saturday a spokesman for the Paris Police Prefecture said the toll was at least 128. A police union official, Gregory Goupil of the Alliance Police Nationale, whose region includes the area of the stadium, said there were two suicide attacks and a bombing that killed at least three people near two entrances and a McDonalds. “And we want to be very clear that we stand together with them in the fight against terrorism and extremism”.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named according to police policy.
Though it was unclear who was responsible for Friday night’s violence, the Islamic State is “clearly the name at the top of everyone’s list”, said Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert and senior adviser to the president of the Washington-based RAND Corporation.
The deadliest attack was on the Bataclan, a popular concert venue where the Californian rock group Eagles of Death Metal was performing.
“Once again we’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians”, said US President Barack Obama.
“It was a bloodbath”, Julien Pearce, a reporter for France’s Europe 1 radio station, told CNN.
“There was blood everywhere, corpses everywhere”.
Prime Minister John Key says his wife Bronagh has been in touch with their daughter Stephie who lives in Paris where she works as an artist. Shots were also fired at the Bataclan concert hall, where a hostage situation is now underway. I see it as a clash of a couple of thousands jihadis with a great city. Jihadists on Twitter immediately praised the attack and criticized France’s military operations against Islamic State extremists. “No one was moving inside the Petit Cambodge restaurant and everyone was on the ground in bar Carillon”, she said.
In the first wave, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at locations near the Stade de France, where a soccer match between France and Germany was taking place.
The match continued until the end but panic broke out in the crowd as rumours of the attack spread, and spectators were held in the stadium and assembled spontaneously on the pitch. Police appeared to be still searching for suspects later.
BFM television says there were several dead in the restaurant shooting in the 10th arrondissement of the capital.
– At least 19 people were killed outside a bar called La Belle Epuipe on Rue de Charonne in the 11th district of Paris.
French police have told bars in Paris to shut down as the hunt goes on for the killers in the shootings and explosions.
The NY police department, which is the largest in the United States, said they were also in close touch with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and French police.
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The Paris carnage came within days of attacks claimed by Islamic State militants on a Shi’ite Muslim district of southern Beirut in Lebanon, and a Russian tourist aircraft which crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
