Five years after Paris attacks, France back on maximum alert

Paris - France is reeling again from a wave of attacks since early September.

By Reuters

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Published: Fri 13 Nov 2020, 1:11 PM

Five years after a squad of militant killers waged the deadliest attack during peacetime in modern-day France, Prime Minister Jean Castex on Friday paid tribute to those killed, with the country once again on its highest security alert.

The militant suicide bombers and gunmen killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more in a series of coordinated attacks on entertainment venues on Nov. 13, 2015, in a night of bloodletting that etched a deep scar in the nation’s psyche.


Castex went first to the Stade de France, where the attack began with suicide blasts outside the stadium during a soccer match attended by then president Francois Hollande. He laid a wreath of flowers at the foot of a wall.

The assault also targeted cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall - sites which have been under a close police watch in the run-up to Friday’s anniversary.


France is reeling again from a wave of attacks since early September: a stabbing outside the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine, the beheading of a history teacher who had shown his class cartoons mocking Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and a deadly knife attack in a church in Nice.

“We face a double-edged threat: from outside, people sent from abroad, and a grave internal threat, people who are amongst us, our enemies within. Those threats are increasing,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told franceinfo radio.

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Saint-Denis Mayor Mathieu Hanotin, French Prime Minister Jean Castex and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo pay tribute outside the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis on November 13. AFP
Saint-Denis Mayor Mathieu Hanotin, French Prime Minister Jean Castex and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo pay tribute outside the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis on November 13. AFP

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