Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for a coordinated assault by gunmen and bombers that killed 127 people at locations across Paris that President Francois Hollande said amounted to an act of war against France.
In the worst attack, a Paris city hall official said four gunmen systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people at a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall before anti-terrorist commandos launched an assault on the building. Dozens of survivors were rescued, and bodies were still being recovered on Saturday morning.
Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in the Paris region, the official said, including an apparent double suicide bombing outside the Stade de France national stadium, where Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international.
The assaults came as France, a founder member of the U.S.-led coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks.
The FBI has said it is now investigating the San Bernardino shooting
in the US state of California as a "terrorist" attack, adding that it
had uncovered new evidence.
David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office,
also said the attackers tried to destroy evidence - crushing two cell phones and throwing them in a rubbish bin.
Upon reading the original source documents of Islam—the Quran, hadith, biographies, and histories—one is struck by the casual and matter-of-fact way that Muhammad and his Muslims traffic in violence and bloodshed.
What fascinates the jihadis ... is “pure revolt”, and this includes kicking against their parents’ tightly bound geographical and linguistic communities. The European jihadis who go to Syria and Iraq speak French or English peppered with badly pronounced Qur’anic Arabic and are surprisingly indifferent to the old colonial struggles and injustices
Several suicide bombers were found with women’s underclothes in their pockets, for the virgins they would meet in paradise
THE Barcelona terror attack has increased the divisions between the Spanish and Catalonian administrations with either side blaming the other for failings in the run-up to the killings.
In a propaganda video released by the SITE Intelligence Group Wednesday, an ISIS member describes the Barcelona perpetrators as "our brothers," while another threatens "Spanish Christians" and promises to return the country to the "land of the Caliphate."
