About 128 people were killed and over 200 injured in a deadly terror attack when gunmen and suicide bombers attacked restaurants, a concert hall and a sports stadium at locations across Paris on Friday.
A terror attack, French President Francois Hollande described as unprecedented.
A Paris city hall official said four gunmen killed at least 87 young people attending a rock concert at the Bataclan music hall. The gunmen detonated explosive belts and dozens of shocked survivors were rescued.
Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in Paris, including a double suicide bombing outside the national stadium, where Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly football international.
Paris public prosecutor, Francois Molins, said the death toll was at least 120 and eight assailants had also died, seven of whom had blown themselves up with explosive belts at various locations, while one was shot dead by police.
“The terrorists, the murderers raked several cafe terraces with machine-gun fire before entering (the concert hall). There were many victims in terrible, atrocious conditions in several places,” police prefect Michel Cadot said.
After being whisked from the football stadium near the blasts, Hollande declared a nationwide state of emergency – the first since the end of World War Two – and announced the closure of France’s borders to stop perpetrators escaping.
The Paris metro railway was closed and schools, universities and municipal buildings were ordered to stay shut on Saturday.
However some rail and air services are expected to run.
“This is a horror,” the visibly shaken president said in a midnight television address to the nation before chairing an emergency cabinet meeting.
He later went to the scene of the bloodiest attack, the Bataclan music hall, and vowed that the government would wage a “merciless” fight against terrorism.