Morocco on High Alert After Paris Terrorist Attacks

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday expressed the “strongest” condemnation over the series of terror attacks in Paris on Friday night. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon) Rescue workers and medics work by victims in a Paris restaurant, Friday, November 13, 2015.

An Associated Press reporter in the stadium Friday night heard two explosions loud enough to penetrate the sounds of cheering fans. “They stopped playing and hit the deck and went backstage and exited”, Michael Dorio told CNN. Television announcers mistakenly attribute the explosions to firecrackers around the stadium, but the BBC reports that at least three explosions happened outside a bar near the stadium that appear to have been part of the start of an attack that has killed at least 18 people.

Ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, now leader of the main conservative opposition party, said, “The terrorists have declared war on France” and backed the state of emergency and border closure.

A number of people were killed and others injured in a series of gun attacks across Paris on Friday, as well as explosions outside the national stadium where France was hosting Germany. He said that France would fight, and that the fight would be merciless. The Guardianreports around 100 people were taken hostage at the Bataclan concert hall in the 11th arrondissement.

Ms Thibault-Lecuivre said an eighth attacker was killed at the venue by security forces during the raid. One official described the scene inside as “carnage”.

Obama said he had not immediately contacted Hollande again because the French president was busy responding to the crisis.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Paris attacks, which came within days of attacks claimed by Islamic State militants on a Shi’ite Muslim district of southern Beirut in Lebanon, and a Russian tourist aircraft, which crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Kerry says the US embassy in Paris is “making every effort to account for the welfare of American citizens in the city”.

– Reuters updates the situation with another shooting, this time at the Halles shopping mall in Paris.

French president Francois Hollande, who was in attendance at the game, was hurried from the stadium amid the early reports of shootings in central Paris and of the developing hostage crisis in the Bataclan theatre.

In September 2013, a shooting at the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi, Kenya, killed more than 60 people and left almost 200 wounded.

Police said the attackers threw explosives at the hostages, in addition to opening fire on them.

At around the 15-minute mark of the France vs Germany game, which the hosts won 2-0 thanks to goals from Olivier Giroud and Andre-Pierre Gignac, an explosion could clearly be heard outside the stadium. Police in Paris told NBC News that several people had also been shot at a restaurant in the nearby 10th arrondissement in Paris.

Earlier, witnesses said an elite anti-terror unit had taken up positions outside the popular concert venue, which was attacked by two or three gunmen, who were reported to have shouted slogans condemning France’s role in Syria.

Oliver, owner of a Senegalese restaurant that is just 20 meters away from the crime scene, told Le Point that he was parking his scooter when he heard noises he assumed were firecrackers.

French authorities are particularly concerned about the threat from hundreds of French Islamic radicals who have travelled to Syria and returned home with skills to stage violence. Coulibaly had killed a policewoman the day before, on January 8.

Amedy Coulibaly, an associate of Said and Cherif Kouachi, attacked a Jewish grocery store in Paris, taking more than a dozen people hostage and killing four.

Eyewitness Ben Grant said he was in a bar with his wife when the gunshots were fired and he had seen six or seven bodies on the ground.

In these hard moments, we must – and I’m thinking of the many victims, their families and the injured – show compassion and solidarity.