www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/11/13/multiple-deaths-reported-after-shootings-explosions-paris/75727746/news.nationalpost.com/news/shootout-at-paris-restaurant-leaves-several-dead-policeTwo restaurants were attacked, and explosions went off in a bar and another unspecified site near a stadium. POlice have just stormed the theatre where the hostages were being held, and killed 2 suspects.
Close BREAKING NEWS Siege at French concert hall ends after police storm scene; 2 suspects killed, reports say Read Story
Terrorists kill dozens in central Paris; hostages taken
PARIS — French president Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency and closed all borders late Friday after terrorist gunmen opened fire at multiple locations in central Paris, killing dozens of people and taking almost 100 hostage at a rock concert.
French security forces stormed the Bataclan theater late Friday, killing at least two attackers, the Associated Press reported. Several ambulances were brought to the scene to cope with the victims.
Earlier, terrorists also set off explosives at the Stade de France, the national stadium, where Germany and France were holding a friendly soccer match.
"Terrorist attacks of unprecedented scale are underway," Hollande said in a national TV address. "There have been dozens of deaths, there are many injured, it's a horror." The French president, who had been at the stadium, called the attacks a "a terrible trauma" for France.
The attacks comes 11 months after brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the Paris offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store, killing 12 people. Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch took credit for that attack, which shocked the French city. "Once again we are under attack," he said.
Hollande said the French military was being deployed around Paris after the unprecedented attacks. He added, without elaborating, that security forces were assaulting one of the sites hit by Friday’s attacks.
"The terrorists want to scare us and instill fear," he said. "There are reasons to be afraid, but the nation knows how to defend itself and mobilize its forces and how to defeat the terrorists."
The death toll ranged as high as 60 in the French media. The Associated Press quoted police as saying 35 were killed in the attacks.
In Washington, President Obama called the assaults an "attack on all humanity and the universal values we all share." He called it "a heartbreaking situation."
Obama says he does not want to speculate about who may be responsible for Paris attacks.No group took immediately responsibility for the attacks.
According to the Associated Press, a police official said 11 people were killed in a Paris restaurant in the 10th arrondissement, and about more than a dozen killed in the Bataclan theatre, where a hostage-taking is under way.
The California rock group Eagles of Death Metal were playing at the time. One or possibly two people came into the concert hall and began shooting, BFM TV reports. Witnesses said the gun at the Paris concert hall shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is great) and fired into the crowd, multiple media outlets reported.
Pierre Marie Bertin, 36, was at the Bataclan when the shooting started. "At first I didn’t understand what was going on — there were so many gunshots and debris flying at my head," he said. "You get down. You find yourself between dead bodies."
He said there were as many as four gunmen. At one point, he said, some male hostages "went onto the balcony and tried to negotiate for the life of their wives with one of the guys. It was sickening."
The initial shootings occurred outside the restaurant Le Petit Cambodia and the bar Le Carillon.
Emilioi Macchio, from Ravenna, Italy, was at the Carillon bar near the restaurant that was targeted, having a beer on the sidewalk, when the shooting started. He said he didn’t see any gunmen or victims, but hid behind a corner, then ran away. “It sounded like fireworks,” he said.
"I was on my way to my sister's when I heard shots being fired. Then I saw three people dead on the ground, I know they were dead because they were being wrapped up in plastic bags," student Fabien Baron tells Reuters.
Witness Ben Grant told the BBC he and his wife were in a bar when he heard gunshots.
“There are a lot of dead people. It’s pretty horrific to be honest ... The pile of bodies in front was too much for my wife to walk over." Police finally came and got everyone out. There appeared to be at least seven dead, he said.