Gunmen and suicide bombers targeted restaurants, a music venue and a sports stadium in Paris on Friday night and killed at least 129 people with 329 injured plunging the French capital into chaos.
Four gunmen shot dead a possible 100 people at a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall featuring the Eagles of Death Metal.
As anti-terrorist military launched a counter-attack on the building, the gunmen detonated explosive belts.
Over 40 people were killed in five simultaneous attacks across Paris including a double suicide bombing at the Stade de France where president Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international.
The death toll, including an unknown number of Portuguese citizens, so far is 127 with eight attackers also dying, one shot by police and seven blowing themselves up.
The terrorists sprayed machinegun fire across several terrace cafes before entering the concert Bataclan concert hall.
According to the Greek Public Order Minister Dimitris Toskas, one attacker at the Stade de France was found near to a Syrian passport passed through the Greek island of Leros but this is being treated with suspicion.
For the first time since WWII, the French president declared a national state of emergency with borders sealed and public areas and much of the capital’s transport system shut down.
Hollande visited the Bataclan music hall after an emergency cabinet meeting and said the government will wage a merciless fight against terrorism.
Emergency services are working at full capacity and police leave has been cancelled as 1,500 soldiers were brought in to Paris. Media has been used to urge people to stay at home until the danger has been declared over.
World leaders, including many arriving in Vienna for the Syria peace talks, have expressed outrage and horror at the attacks in Paris.
Across the world, tributes have been made and landmarks lit up with red, white and blue, including New York’s World Trade Centre and at Sydney’s opera house where Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull earlier said that protecting freedom was a global battle, one against those who seek to suppress freedom and seek to assert “some form of religious tyranny - a threat in the name of God but is truthfully the work of the devil.”
“The people in Paris are enduring a nightmare of violence, terror and fear,” said Angela Merkel from Berlin this morning. “We, the German friends, we are feeling with them. We are crying with them.”
“This attack on freedom is not only aimed against Paris. It’s aimed against us all,” Merkel said, adding that Europe would stand united to defend its values. We know that our free life is stronger than terror.”
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks, in retaliation for French air strikes in Syria, with the promise that the next attacks will be in Washington, London and Rome.
