François Hollande: Paris attacks were an ‘act of war’ by ISIS
The French president declared three days of national mourning, and said that military troops would patrol the capital.
PARIS — President François Hollande on Saturday blamed the Islamic State for the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, as the death toll rose to 127 victims, with 200 others hospitalized. He declared three days of national mourning, and said that military troops would patrol the capital. France remained under a nationwide state of emergency.
“It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, Daesh, against France,’’ Hollande told the nation from the Élysée Palace, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside, which the investigation will help establish.’’
Hollande did not specify what intelligence pointed to the militant group’s involvement. On Saturday, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, but its claim could not be independently verified.
“France, because it was foully, disgracefully and violently attacked, will be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh,’’ Hollande said Saturday, adding that France would act within the law but with “all the necessary means, and on all terrains, inside and outside, in coordination with our allies, who are, themselves, targeted by this terrorist threat.’’
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Much remained unknown: the identities of the eight attackers, who are all dead; whether any accomplices remained at large; and how a plot of such sophistication and lethality could have escaped the notice of intelligence agencies, both in France and abroad.
Paris, stricken by shock and grief, remained in a state of lockdown, with public transportation hobbled and public institutions — schools, museums, libraries, pools, food markets — closed. Charles de Gaulle Airport remained open, but with significant delays because of tighter passport and baggage checks.
The authorities continued to search for possible accomplices of the eight attackers known so far, all of whom died Friday: seven by detonating suicide bombs and one in a shootout with the police at a concert hall, the Bataclan, where gunmen methodically killed at least 80 people.
About 40 others died in apparently coordinated attacks outside the Stade de France, north of Paris, where the French and German national soccer teams were playing an exhibition match, and four other places in the city.
Parisians were left struggling to make sense of their new reality. Parents whose children slept through the ordeal were facing the delicate task of trying to explain what had happened, and why so many planned activities had been canceled and public spaces like museums, schools and libraries were closed.
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