Paris Attacks: Concert Hall, National Stadium Among Six Places Targeted in Paris

PARIS: The string of coordinated attacks in and around Paris late on Friday left more than 120 people dead, in the worst such violence in France’s history.

The assailants struck at least six very different venues, ranging from the national sports stadium to a pizzeria. The overall toll was expected to rise.

A full house of 1,500 people were packed into the popular venue in eastern Paris for a concert by the US band Eagles of Death Metal.

About an hour after the band took to the stage, the whole concert hall was turned into “a bloodbath” according to a French radio reporter at the scene.

Black-clad gunmen wielding AK-47s stormed into the hall and fired calmly and methodically at hundreds of screaming concert-goers.

Fellow radio presenter Pierre Janaszak heard the first shots and thought it was part of the act.

Four assailants were killed after police stormed in — three by activating their suicide vests and a fourth shot dead — but not before they had mown down some 100 people.

Three loud explosions were heard outside France’s national stadium during the first half of a friendly international football match between France and Germany.

At least five people died outside the glittering venue which staged the 1998 World Cup final with several others seriously hurt.

One of the explosions was near a McDonald’s restaurant on the fringes of the stadium.

At least one of the two explosions in rue Jules-Rimet was a suicide bomb attack.

French President Francois Hollande, who was watching the game, was immediately evacuated.

The match was eventually completed and the stadium emptied in a relatively calm atmosphere.

Another man said he heard shots ring out, in sharp bursts, for two or three minutes.

“I saw several bloody bodies on the ground. I don’t know if they were dead,” he said.

Pierre Montfort lives close to a Cambodian restaurant on Paris’ Rue Bichat, a little further north, was the scene of another attack.

A few hundred metres (yards) from the Bataclan, the terrace of the Casa Nostra pizzeria was targeted.

Five people were killed by attackers wielding automatic rifles, according to witness Mathieu, 35.

A judicial source said one of the attackers exploded his suicide vest on the Boulevard Voltaire, near the Bataclan. It is not yet known if there were any injuries from the explosion.

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Source:Ndtv