France: Three Terrorist Teams behind Paris Attacks
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Three coordinated teams of gunmen struck at six different sites across Paris in a bloody wave of terrorist bombings and shootings that left nearly 130 people dead, the Paris public prosecutor said.
Francois Molins told a news conference on Saturday that at least 129 people were killed and 352 more injured – including 90 critically – in the attacks on Friday night on the Stade de France, a city-center concert hall and a series of packed cafes and bars, The Guardian reported.
Molins said three French nationals had been arrested in Belgium, where they all lived, in connection with the attacks, France’s deadliest since the Second World War and the worst witnessed in Europe since the 2004 Madrid railway bombings.
As police worked to identify the seven militants, all of whom died in the attacks, Molins also confirmed that at least one of the fighters, identified by his fingerprints, was a French national from the Paris suburb of Courcouronnes. The man, born in 1985, had a criminal record and had been flagged as an extremist as early as 2010, the prosecutor said.
Relatives of one of the attackers, a Frenchman born in the Paris suburbs, were later arrested on Saturday, according to French authorities who said that searches were underway.
Molins also said earlier that a Syrian passport, belonging to a man born in 1990 who was not known to the French authorities, had been found lying close by the bodies of two other terrorists, who both blew themselves up in the course of their attacks.
Late on Friday, a string of coordinated attacks in and around the French capital left at least 129 people dead and some 200 others injured.
A state of emergency has been declared in the European country shaken by the horrific attacks.