Attacks in Paris Stadium, concert hall

There is great alarm over the apparent methodology and likely planning that would have been needed to pull off such a series of attacks, one U.S. counterterrorism official told CNN. The attacks resembled tactics that have been used by a number of terror groups -- including al Qaeda's focus on mass casualty and visibility, and the small, tactical nature of attacks that are more the hallmark of ISIS and its acolytes. It is still not clear who is responsible

A fiery double suicide bombing terrorized a mostly Shiite residential area of southern Beirut on Thursday, ripping through a busy shopping district at rush hour. The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 43 people had been killed and more than 200 wounded in the worst attack to strike the city in years.

The Islamic State extremist group, which controls parts of neighboring Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group portrayed its motives as baldly sectarian, saying it had targeted Shiite Muslims, whom it views as apostates. It mentioned almost as an afterthought that it had targeted Hezbollah, the Shiite militant organization that backs the Syrian government in the civil war raging next door.

A young man who was inside the Bataclan when the terrorist attack began on Friday said he saw two or three gunmen burst into the club waving automatic weapons.

“This is because of all the harm done by Hollande to Muslims all over the world,” one of the gunmen yelled in French. He was referring to François Hollande, the president of France.

A young woman named Yasmine who was inside the Bataclan and was shot in the foot described the scene when the attacks began.

“I saw these two crazy guys arrive,” Yasmine said. “They started firing on everybody.”

She said one of them shouted, “What you are doing in Syria, you are going to pay for it now!”

One witness inside the Bataclan hall told how gunmen burst in shouting “Allah Akbar” - God is the greatest – before opening fire. They were also heard to shout: “This is for Syria”

At the start of a nightmarish, bloody, apocalyptic evening in Paris, Carmela Uranga heard sounds near her apartment that she thought at first were merely fireworks.

Uranga, 47, a British-born mother of two young children, was eating an early dinner with her girls Friday when they heard "scary noises" and Uranga rushed to her window, making her girls stand back.

Uranga lives by the Le Petit Cambodge restaurant and the Le Carillon bar in the 10th arrondissement where the first of several terrorist attacks occurred Friday night. She was shocked and horrified by what she saw just under her window.


"People were running all over the place and then I saw bodies lying on the street," Uranga told The Daily Beast from Paris via telephone. "It was so surreal. I still can't believe I saw what I saw. I live in this wonderful, vital place which is like a small village in the midst of Paris. And I saw bodies!"

As she surveyed the carnage below her window on Rue Bichat, she saw two men she believes were the shooters get in what she said appeared to be a a "getaway" car that passed just under her window.

It was a black car with Belgium license plates," she said. "There was a driver and a passenger. I saw the passenger very clearly. He looked so young, 18, no more than 20 at the oldest. There was no doubt in my mind these were the shooters. They were leaving the scene so calmly. Another car was blocking the only other way out so they had a clear path. This seemed to be a very planned attack. It all happened so quickly will never forget seeing those two pass by in the car under my window."

No group has yet taken responsibility for the attacks. The obvious suspects at this point will of course be the two main Islamist networks – Al-Qaida and ISIS - as they are the ones who were involved in the January attacks and other operations in Europe over the last decade. The level of coordination involved in this attack would point to Al-Qaida, though the last time anything came near to this scale was the London underground train and bus bombings in July 2005. Also Al-Qaida was thought to have been changing tactics recently and in 2013, its leader Ayman al Zawahiri warned against attacking targets where "innocent Muslims" may be hurt. ISIS would seem on some counts a more likely perpetrator at this point, however the group has never shown anything near this operational capacity outside of its Middle Eastern battlefields. Up to now, all attacks in Europe ascribed to Jihadists identifying with ISIS have been the actions of "lone-wolves" who had either returned from Syria or were unable to travel there.
The Paris attacks came nearly two weeks after the crash of a Russian airliner in Sinai, killing 224 passengers and crewmembers. The near-consensus among intelligence services in the west is that the cause of the crash was a bomb planted on the plane by an ISIS affiliate in Sinai. If the night's attacks are connected to the Islamic State, it will mean a shift in strategy, away from focusing solely on building its Caliphate in the Levant and towards expanding their Jihad to the countries currently attacking its forces in Syria and Iraq. Russia two weeks ago, France last night - both nations with fighter jets operating against them
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For ten years, he hosted the antiterrorist judicial Pole. Forced to step down in a storm to become Vice-President of the High Court of Lille, Marc Trévidic speaks without taboos.

Paris Match. Can you estimate today the level of risk faced by French?
Marc Trévidic. The threat is at a maximum level, never achieved before. First, we have become to the Islamic State [EI] the enemy number one. France is the main target of an army of terrorists to unlimited means. Next, it is clear that we are particularly vulnerable because of our geographical position, ease of entry into our territory for all jihadists of European, French or not, and because of the clearly expressed and ever by men of IE to hit us. And it must be said: at the magnitude of the threat and the diversity of forms it can take, our counter-terrorism apparatus has become permeable, fallible, and has more effectiveness that had previously . Finally, I have become convinced that men Daech [acronym of the Islamic state] have the ambition and the means to reach us much harder by organizing scale actions incomparable to those conducted so far. I say this as a technician: the darkest days are ahead. The real war that EI intends to carry on our soil has not yet begun.

Why so alarming a fact?
We have before us a more powerful terrorist group than ever. Although most powerful al-Qaeda to its heyday. The EI, high of about 30,000 "soldiers" in the field, has recruited more members than the organization founded by bin Laden in fifteen years! And it is not finished. France is in fact facing a double threat. That of the surge of what I call the "scuds" human individual jihad, men who take action with little training or preparation, acting alone, with varying degrees of success, as we have seen in recent time. And that, out of proportion, I fear: major actions that prepares undoubtedly EI, such as those carried out by al Qaeda, which have sometimes resulted in appalling carnage.

Do you have indications that heads this type of large-scale actions?
The so stop talking and agree to tell us that EI intends to systematically and hit us hard. Understand me, it is clear from our investigation that we are undoubtedly the absolute enemy. Daech men have the means, money and the ability to easily acquire many weapons they want and to organize mass attacks. Terrorism is an escalation; you should always go further, hit harder. And then there is "the Prix Goncourt terrorism" to achieve, and I am referring here to the attacks of 11 September 2001 against the World Trade Center. I do not imagine for a moment that a man like that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his army will meet long external operations of some magnitude. They are thinking of something much broader, aiming first of all France.


How did it happen? Why France?
Because it comes back to this idea that we are the ideal target! Traditionally, the enemy number one of jihadist terrorism has long been the United States, but the parameters have changed. Americans are more difficult to reach. France, it is easy to touch. There are geographical proximity, there are relays throughout Europe, there are operational ease of return to Syria in France seasoned volunteers, Europeans, members of the organization, which can return legally in the Schengen area and melt it before taking action.

There are also political reasons, ideological?
Obviously! France has become the number one ally of the US in the war against the jihadists Daech and chains. We fight with arms alongside the United States. We conducted air raids against IE in Iraq. Now we intervene in Syria. Moreover, France has a heavy "passive" in the eyes of the Islamists. For them, it's still a colonial nation, sometimes claiming its Christian roots, openly supporting Israel selling weapons to countries known as "infidels and corrupt" Gulf or the Middle East. And a nation that deliberately oppress its large Muslim community. This last argument is an essential axis of propaganda for EI. Our armed forces also intervened in Mali to stop the Islamists, although they are not the same networks. Let us add that in France, we are for years on the front line to fight the "global jihad". Our long antiterrorist device allowed us to bring severe blows to terrorists and jihadists of all persuasions.

This is no longer the case today?
No, the situation has changed. The evidence is there: we are no longer able to prevent the attacks as in the past. We can not prevent them. There is something inevitable. Of course, we arrest people, we dismantle cells was lucky too, as we have seen with some recent cases, but luck or the fact that the terrorists are planting in their operational mode, or that Citizens do show great bravery, it can not last forever. As for the resources allocated to the fight against terrorism, they have clearly become very inadequate, and I weigh my words. It borders on poverty at a time when the threat has never been stronger. The past two years, I found myself there was sometimes more investigators to conduct investigations we needed! So we did the bare minimum, without being able to push the investigations without "SAV", at the risk of missing out on serious threats. Political take martial postures, but they have no long-term vision. We, the judges, police ISB, field men, we are completely overwhelmed. We are in danger of "going into the wall.
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What to think, then, of the new French strategy? The first air strikes were aimed Daech on Syrian soil. France invokes the "right of self-defense" and said he wanted to target terrorists at the base ...
Conduct strikes "extra-judicial" returns to be modeled on the American model. For years the United States eliminate leaders, strategists, recruiters in Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, but without weakening the target groups. It has never worked! I do not believe in the merits of the French strategy. Can we think Daech destabilize and undermine its objectives by eliminating leaders, "business" that would have been identified? Are there any leaders of such importance that they can not be replaced in time by other men? Nothing is less sure. Anyway, they have us "in the crosshairs" and from this point of view then, it will not change! This may even have the opposite effect than the one desired by creating "vocations". If, by chance, there were some really sharp targeting, the arm of justice is not very long, I would tend to say that a small rocket will do; but, clearly, there is nothing in this strategy to turn the tide of a war against an army of terrorists and win\.
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Those who want to attack us to make us the most harm possible. And do it over time. They prepare it. The French will not have to get used to the threat of attacks, but the reality of the attacks, that will inevitably arise in my eyes. We must not close our eyes. We are now in the eye of the cyclone. The worst is ahead of us.

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism official told NBC News that the Paris attacks, because of their sophistication, didn't appear to be the work of ISIS. Rather, the level of coordination points more toward al Qaeda, the official said.

The French are overwhelmed by the numbers of people they're having to monitor," said CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank.

"They've opened surveillance files into more than 5,000 Islamic extremists throughout the country. There have been more than a thousand French nationals traveling to Syria and Iraq. They know of 250 that have come back, and that's just the number they're aware of."

He pointed to a terror plot that was thwarted in Belgium in January, when security services uncovered a huge cache of weapons -- as well as police uniforms -- suggesting a possible attack on a sensitive site there.

"Intelligence officials there and in the United States have told me that plot was directed by the top leadership of ISIS in Syria," he said.

"This is a group that is increasingly getting into the international terrorism business. I think all these different events of the past few weeks have really illustrated this: More than 100 killed during an attack in Ankara -- ISIS suicide bombers -- the attack in Beirut, 40-50 killed, ISIS bombers that claim for taking down that Russian Metrojet airliner. It goes on. ISIS is pivoting towards international terrorism."

President François Hollande called the terrorist attacks that killed 127 people in Paris on Friday night an “act of war,” and blamed the slaughter on the Islamic State.

“It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, Daesh, against France,” Mr. Hollande said on Saturday 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.”

Mr. Hollande did not specify what intelligence the authorities had gathered to established the Islamic State’s involvement.

The Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attacks, calling them “miracles” in a statement released by one of its publications and distributed on Twitter — a claim that could not be independently verified.

Peshmerga forces backed by US-led airstrikes have retaken the northern town of Sinjar from Islamic State militants, the Kurdish regional president in Iraq has said, though US and Kurdish military officials urged caution in declaring victory.

Masoud Barzani made the announcement during a press conference on Mount Sinjar, which overlooks the town.
Earlier, the Kurdistan regional security council said forces had entered Sinjar from all directions to begin clearing the town of Isis militants, seizing key buildings in the process. Isis fighters were “defeated and on the run”, it added. A Kurdish flag was raised in the town centre after the forces encountered minimal resistance.

Heavy bursts of gunfire could be heard in the town as militants descended the hill overlooking Sinjar from the north, some with rocket-propelled grenades on their shoulders, witnesses said.

“We promised, we have liberated Sinjar,” Barzani said. “It’s time for the Yazidi girls to raise their heads up. Revenge has been taken for them.”

Sinjar was seized 15 months ago by Isis forces, who massacred or enslaved the local Yazidi community and ousted other minorities from the Nineveh plains.

Maj Ghazi Ali, who oversees one of the units involved in the offensive, described the situation in the city as still dangerous, and warned that it was too soon to declare victory. “I can’t say the operation is complete because there are still threats remaining inside Sinjar,” he told the Associated Press.

Col Steven Warren, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, confirmed only that Peshmerga fighters raised their flag on grain silos in the eastern part of the town. He said they had not fully retaken Sinjar.
An offensive to retake the town was launched late on Wednesday as Kurds, backed by US-led airstrikes, severed a major supply line between the militant group’s stronghold in eastern Syria, and Mosul, their seat of power in Iraq.


As Kurdish forces took surrounding villages on Thursday, a commander said he had never seen Isis (also known as Daesh) so vulnerable. “For the last 15 months that I have been fighting Daesh, I have never seen them so weak, they were literally running away,” said Col Kamran Hawrami. “Our objective is to free Sinjar and the surrounding areas. The fighting is continuing on all fronts but we have passed by bodies of Daesh [fighters].”

16:56: Belgian police say they have raided properties in a Brussels neighborhood in connection with the Paris attacks. A source close to the operations told the Reuters news agency there had been "between two and three searches, linked to the Paris attacks" and that one man had been arrested