Friday night’s deadly shootings and suicide bombings in Paris have left a death toll of at least 127 people, in what French President François Hollande has called “an act of war that was prepared, organized, planned from abroad with internal help.” According to the BBC, an additional 180 people have been wounded, with at least 80 in critical condition.
Eight perpetrators of the attacks are dead, per Paris officials, with police saying they believe all the attackers are dead. Officials at the U.S. State Department believe American citizens are among the injured in Paris, though deputy spokesman Mark Toner would not say whether any Americans had been killed.
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The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks in an online statement which numbered the attackers at eight and boasted of their targeting Paris as the “capital of adultery and vice.” France’s participation in U.S.-led airstrikes on ISIS in Syria was alluded to in the jihadists’ statement.
Leaders from nations around the world sent their condolences and support to the French government on Friday and Saturday. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, however, laid blame for the attacks on French foreign policy—which maintains that Assad must be removed from power in Syria. “The first question asked by every French citizen today is, ‘Have the French policies over the past five years brought any good to the French people?’“ Assad said Saturday. “The answer is no, so what I ask him to do is to act in the interest of the French people—which means changing his policies.”
The attacks began at around 9:20 PM Paris time Friday night, with a bomb explosion—thought to be a suicide bomber at a restaurant—just outside the Stade de France, where a soccer friendly between France and Germany was being contested, with President Hollande in attendance. This was followed by shootings or explosions at a total of six locations, including the Bataclan concert hall, where attackers gunned down dozens of hostages.