Pandemonium in Paris

摘要

There are those that believe somehow Friday 13 is a date that is one filled with foreboding. In Paris in 2015 that fiction became a reality. In a series of six attacks timed from 2020 GMT to 2320 GMT, when French Police forced their way into the Bataclan theatre where hostages had been taken, 129 people were killed and nearly 100 were left in what the French refer to as in a state of "absolute emergency". With such numbers it is almost inevitable that the total number of dead will rise. This was France's worst ever terrorist attack by some margin. The sequence of attacks had emerged in a fast flowing and clearly planned initial situation. Within 20 minutes at five locations across Paris, three suicide bombers had killed themselves and gunmen had opened fire at two restaurants and bars. In that first 20 minutes, 17 people lay dead and 11 were seriously wounded. But this was just the aperitif. What was about to emerge was to create a denouement that would see the number of dead and injured climb swiftly towards 500 in total. This was not the end of the savagery. At 2053 a suicide bomber detonated his vest outside Stade de France. He was the only casualty.