November 2015 Paris attacks

A series of coordinated Islamist terrorist attacks took place on Friday, 13 November 2015 in Paris, France, and the city's northern suburb, Saint-Denis. Beginning at 21:16, three suicide bombers struck outside the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, during an international football match, after failing to gain entry to the stadium. Another group of attackers then fired on crowded cafés and restaurants in Paris, with one of them also detonating an explosive, killing himself in the process. A third group carried out another mass shooting and took hostages at an Eagles of Death Metal concert attended by 1,500 people in the Bataclan theatre, leading to a stand-off with police. The attackers were either shot or detonated suicide vests when police raided the theatre.

The attackers killed 130 people, including 90 at the Bataclan theatre. Another 416 people were injured, almost 100 critically. Seven of the attackers were also killed. The attacks were the deadliest in metropolitan France since the Paris massacre of 1961, and the deadliest in the European Union since the Madrid train bombings of 2004. The attacks came one day after similar attacks in Beirut, Lebanon. France had been on high alert since the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo offices and a Jewish supermarket in Paris that killed 17 people.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks (as they had done with the Beirut attacks a day prior), saying that it was retaliation for French airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq. The president of France, François Hollande, said the attacks were an act of war by Islamic State. The attacks were planned in Syria and organised by a terrorist cell based in Belgium. Two of the Paris attackers were Iraqis, but most were born in France or Belgium, and had fought in Syria. Some of the attackers had returned to Europe among the flow of migrants and refugees from Syria.

In response to the attacks, a three-month state of emergency was declared across the country to help fight terrorism, which involved the banning of public demonstrations, and allowing the police to carry out searches without a warrant, put anyone under house arrest without trial, and block websites that encouraged acts of terrorism. On 15 November, France launched the biggest airstrike of Opération Chammal, its part in the bombing campaign against Islamic State. The authorities searched for surviving attackers and accomplices. On 18 November, the suspected lead operative of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed in a police raid in Saint-Denis, along with two others.