French President Blames Blames ISIS For Act Of War In Paris

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A State of emergency has been declared in France following a series of attacks in Paris Friday night. Over 150 people have been killed and many more injured in 7 attacks

The French President, François Hollande called the attacks an “act of war,” and blamed the slaughter on the ISIS.

In a televised address the French Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, has authorized local authorities to impose curfews if needed.

Hollande has announced three days of state mourning for the victims of the attacks.

On Saturday, The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks.

In a statement they said their fighters, armed with suicide bomb belts and machine guns, carried out the terror strikes at various locations they had pinpointed in the heart of the French capital.

The NYTimes reports: “It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, Daesh, against France,” Mr. Hollande said from, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside, which the investigation will help establish.”

Mr. Hollande did not specify what intelligence the authorities had gathered to established the Islamic State’s involvement.

The Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attacks, calling them “miracles” in a statement released by one of its publications and distributed on Twitter — a claim that could not be independently verified.

Stricken with shock and grief, Parisians rose Saturday to a state of national emergency, with public transportation hobbled and institutions — schools, museums, libraries, pools, food markets — all closed.

The authorities continued to look for possible accomplices of the eight attackers known so far, all of whom died on Friday: seven by detonating suicide bombs and one in a shootout with the police at a concert hall, the Bataclan, where gunmen methodically killed at least 80 people.

Dozens of others died in apparently coordinated attacks outside the Stade de France, where the French and German soccer teams were playing an exhibition match, and four other restaurants and bars in the city. Nearly 200 others were wounded, at least 80 of them in critical condition, French television reported.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, meeting in Vienna on Saturday with Secretary of State John Kerry and other top diplomats to discuss the crisis in Syria, said the attacks highlighted the urgency of the talks. “It is more necessary than ever in the current circumstance to coordinate the international fight against terrorism,” he said.

The casualties, in what Mr. Hollande called an “unprecedented” assault, eclipsed by far the deaths in Paris during the massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and related attacks around the French capital by Islamic militant extremists in January. His government announced sharply increased border controls and heightened police powers as it mobilized 1,500 soldiers to guard the capital.

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