PARIS — At a makeshift shrine down the street from a concert hall turned scene of carnage, a steady stream of well-wishers came Saturday to pay tribute to scores massacred when suicide assailants struck the music theater, a soccer stadium
PARIS — At a makeshift shrine down the street from a concert hall turned scene of carnage, a steady stream of well-wishers came Saturday to pay tribute to scores massacred when suicide assailants struck the music theater, a soccer stadium and several restaurants and bars.
“The French will combat these thieves of life,” declared a handwritten note.
But Friday’s brazen assaults — all targeting venues where people went to savor life in Europe’s storied cultural capital — served to dramatize anew the continent’s continued vulnerability to terrorism.
The string of shootings and bombings came less than a year after attacks here on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery that left 17 dead. Last January’s strikes, while horrific, were aimed at specific targets — an irreverent publication that had lampooned Islam and a market that catered to Jewish shoppers.
This time, the victims appeared chosen simply because they were in France and were out on a weekend night to enjoy music, sports and the company of fellow human beings.
Preventing such attacks in a free society is a daunting security challenge, experts caution, even for nations like France with considerable experience fighting extremist groups and infiltrating militant cells.
“Paris is … a warning that the best counter-terrorist efforts in the world cannot protect any country, particularly the open societies in the West, from every attack,” wrote Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
French President Francois Hollande labeled the synchronized series of attacks an “act of war” that was “organized and planned from outside,” though details about the planning were publicly vague.
The extremist Islamic State group took credit for the attacks, which claimed more than 125 lives, boasting that it had targeted “the capital of prostitution and obscenity” in retribution for France’s involvement in the U.S.-led coalition bombing of extremist-held terrain in Syria and Iraq.
If Islamic State indeed carried out the attacks, Friday’s operation would represent the latest in a string of deadly operations outside of Syria and Iraq, the group’s home base. Its ability to carry out such sensational assaults would now appear to equal or even eclipse that of al-Qaida, a fierce rival.
Islamic State, a Qaida breakaway faction, has also taken responsibility for twin suicide bombings in a Beirut suburb last week that killed more than 40, and for downing a Russian commercial airliner over the Sinai two weeks ago, killing all 224 on board.
When it first emerged on the scene amid the tumult of the long-running Syrian war, many commentators said that Islamic State’s interests appeared to be largely local in nature. But that has changed considerably, perhaps in response to intense international efforts to destroy the group’s self-proclaimed “caliphate.”
In a chilling tone, Islamic State called Friday’s attacks “the first of the storm and a warning to those who wish to learn.”
Thus the Paris carnage may have been the latest collateral damage from the calamitous Syrian war, which has already destabilized much of the Middle East and helped generate a refugee crisis in Europe.
Friday’s attacks seemed certain to increase pressure on deeply divided world powers to help broker a political settlement to the Syria conflict — and to escalate military operations against Islamic State and other extremist groups that have thrived amid the chaos in Syria.
As investigators delve into the attack, there are many unanswered questions: Was it indeed conceived and planned abroad or in Europe? Where did the assailants get the guns, ammunition and explosives — and where did they assemble the bombs? Do any attackers or support personnel, such as bomb assemblers — remain at large? Police on Saturday were investigating whether one team of attackers may have escaped.
France is considered particularly vulnerable to domestic terrorism. More than 1,800 of its citizens are believed to have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight with extremists. Radicalized returnees trained in the Syria-Iraq battle zone present a significant threat, authorities say. But it was unclear late Saturday how many, if any, of the attackers in Friday’s killing rampage had traveled to Syria or Iraq.
