It was 13 November 2015, night began at the city of Paris in France. Inside few homes located in suburban areas of Paris. A group of Islamic extremists were getting ready with their guns and bombs. It was 9:20pm, a terrorist (suicide bomber) was foiled after in the Stade de France in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis. Inside the stadium, Hollande the French President was among the 80, 000 people watching an association football (soccer) match between the French and German national teams. When security officers at one of the main entrances detected the terrorist’s bomb belt, he detonated it, killing one passerby. The belt was an improvised device consisting of the highly unstable explosive compound triacetone triperoxide and shrapnel such as nails and ball bearings; identical devices would be employed by other terrorists throughout the evening. Although the blast was audible to those inside the stadium, play on the field continued.
At 9:25pm, a team of terrorists launched a series of attacks on popular nightspots in Paris’s 10th and 11th arrondissements (municipal districts). The first location to be targeted was Le Carillon, a popular bar on the rue Alibert that had been a neighbourhood fixture for some 40 years. After firing on patrons at Le Carillon with AK-47 assault rifles, the terrorists moved across rue Bichat to Le Petit Cambodge, a Cambodian restaurant. Although this attack took just minutes, it left 15 people dead and more than a dozen wounded. The terrorists were then observed leaving the scene in a blast SEAT Leon Hatchback.
Minutes later at 9:30pm, another terrorist (suicide bomber) attacked the Stade de France, detonating his belt at another entrance but causing no casualties. Inside the game continued, but French President Hollande was evacuated from the stadium because by then it became apparent that a terrorist attack was under way. The occupants of the black Leon crossed into the 11th arrondissement and opened fire on businesses along the rue de la Fontaine au Roi at 9:32pm. Five people were killed and eight were wounded at the Italian restaurant La Casa Nostra, the Cafe Bonne Biere, and a laundromat. The terrorists then continued their deadly course, targeting La Belle Equipe, a popular eatery on the rue de Charonne at 9:36pm. The restaurant’s terrace was packed with dinners, and the terrorists fired into the crowd, killing 19 people as well as critically wounding 9 others. At the southeast end of the Boulevard Voltaire, just blocks southeast of La Belle Equipe, a terrorist (suicide bomber) detonated his belt outside the cafe Comptoir Voltaire at 9:40pm, injuring one person.
At the same time, at the other end of the Boulevard Voltaire, the deadliest attack of the evening was being carried out at the Bataclan, a historic theatre and concert hall. The American rock band Eagles of Death Metal was playing to a sold-out crowd at the 1,500-capacity venue when three terrorists burst in and fired on the audience. Some of the concertgoers were able to escape through a side entrance, and dozens took refuge on the building’s roof, while others hid or feigned death in an effort to avoid the attention of the terrorists. The terrorists shouted “Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest)” and indictments of Hollande for French military intervention in Syria as the massacre continued. The terrorists occupied the Bataclan for more than two hours, holding hostages and killing indiscriminately, before French security forces stormed into the building at 12:20am. Two of the terrorists detonated their suicide belts and the third terrorist’s belt exploded spontaneously when it was hit with police bullets. Scores were seriously wounded in the attack, and at the least 89 people were killed.
As the siege at the Bataclan was developing, the 80, 000 fans at the Strade de France were becoming increasingly aware of the horrors unfolding outside the stadium. Sirens and police helicopters were audible in the distance and at 9:53pm another terrorist (suicide bomber) detonated his belt near a McDonald’s restaurant a short distance from the stadium. Match organizers and stadium security officials had decided to allow the game to continue to discourage mass panic and fans were prevented from leaving until it was clear that it was safe to do so. The match ended in a 2-0 victory for France shortly before 11:00pm and many fans with nowhere else to go, poured onto the field. The mood was somber and the crowd remained orderly as stadium officials assessed the situation outside. It was after 11:30pm when fans finally began to head to the exits. In the corridors beneath the stadium, members of the crowd broke into a defiant rendition of “La Marseillaise”, the French national anthem. In the days after the attacks, the French sports minister would praise the actions of the Stade de France staff for heading off what could have been a far greater tragedy.
While the hostage crisis at the Bataclan was still ongoing, French President Hollande declared a state of emergency call for all of France. Security services combed the city and it was determined that seven of the nine terrorists were dead. On November 14, ISIL claimed responsibility for the bloodshed in Paris saying that it had represented “the first of the storm”. Hollande responded by calling the attacks “an act of war” and declared three days of national mourning. Police carried out hundreds of raids across France over subsequent days and on November 15 the black SEAT hatchback that had been used by the restaurant terrorists was found abandoned in the eastern suburb of Montreuil. In the backseat, the police discovered a cache of weapons. Also on November 15, French warplanes launched a series of retaliatory strikes on the de facto ISIL capital of AI-Raqqah, Syria. This marked the beginning of a dramatic escalation of French military intervention in the Syrian Civil War.
As investigators established the identities of the terrorists, attention turned to Belgium, where the suspected mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud had extensive ties. Belgian-born and of Moroccan descent. Abaaoud had grown up in the Brussels commune of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, an area that drew the attention of counterterrorism experts as a potential hotbed of militant Islamist extremism. In Molenbeek, Abaaoud had connected with several of the terrorists involved in the attacks at Paris and the French law enforcement officials also linked him to the foiled attack on the Paris-bound passenger train in August. Another Molenbeek native, Salah Abdeslam was sought by police for his involvement in the Paris attacks. He had rented several of the cars used by terrorists and was believed to have been the driver for the terrorists (suicide bombers) at the Stade de France. Abdeslam was stopped by police hours after the attacks but he was released.
Abaaoud remained at large after the attacks, his fingerprints were discovered on one of the AK-47s found in the SEAT getaway car and mobile phone records placed him near the Bataclan during the siege. In the early morning hours of November 18, members of the police, the military and the French elite counterterrorist unit. The groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN; National Gendarmerie Intervention group) converged on an apartment in Saint-Denis. An intense firefight followed with more than 5,000 rounds expended and the building was partially demolished by police grenades and bomb belts detonated by police grenades and bomb belts detonated by the suspected terrorists. After seven hours, the operation was declared over. From the rubble, police recovered the bodies of Abaaoud, his female cousin and the suspected third restaurant terrorist. They also found evidence planned of a follow-up attack on Paris’s La Defense financial district. Addressing a meeting of French mayors shortly after the Saint-Denis raid, Hollande defied anti-immigrant politicians who had sought to link the attacks with Europe’s migrant crisis when he reaffirmed France’s commitment to accept 30, 000 Syrian refugees over two years.
As the search continued for Abdeslam, Brussels was placed on lockdown on November 21 in response to news of a “serious and imminent” threat to the city. Schools, businesses and the metro system would remain closed for days while soldiers patrolled public areas. On November 23, French police recovered a bomb belt identical to those worn by the terrorists from a trash can in Paris suburb of Montrouge. This led to speculation that Abdeslam whose mobile phone had been traced to that area, may have discarded the belt rather than carry out an attack. On the international front, the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean to support the French military campaign against ISIL and Hollande traveled to Washington, DC to meet with US President Barack Obama in an effort to forge a tighter anti-ISIL coalition.
In the months following the attacks, French and Belgian investigators continued to pursue leads and the French government extended its state of emergency until May 2016. On 15 March 2016, police raided a flat in Forest, a suburb south of Brussels and a firefight broke out that left four police officers injured and one terrorist. The Algerian national with suspected ties to ISIL was dead. Two suspects escaped during the gun battle and investigators recovered fingerprints belonging to Abdeslam from the apartment. On March 18, police raided a flat in Molenbeek and after four months on the run, Abdeslam was arrested following a brief gun battle.
On 23 April 2018, the Belgian court sentenced Abdeslam to 20 years in prison for attempted murder for his role in the gunfight that preceded his arrest. He remained in prison in France, where he awaited trial on charges related to the Paris attacks. The trial which began in September 2021 was the largest in modern French history. More than 300 lawyers represented some 2,500 plaintiffs and 20 defendants. The court considered more than one million pages of evidence. Abdeslam the highest profile defendant was found guilty and received a sentence of whole life in prison. The 19 others who had aided in the planning and execution of the attacks received sentences ranging from two years to life with the possibility of parole.
The End