PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron began a day of commemoration ceremonies on Thursday (Nov 13), 10 years on from France’s worst attack, beginning at the first site targeted, the Stade de France just outside Paris.
Macron was joined by his wife, Brigitte Macron, and other senior politicians including former president Francois Hollande, who was in the stadium when the attack started.
“The pain remains,” the president wrote on X.
“In solidarity, for the lives lost, the wounded, the families and loved ones, France remembers.”
Jihadists killed 130 people in shootings and suicide bombings in and around Paris on the night of Nov 13, 2015, with the Islamic State group claiming responsibility.
The attackers killed around 90 people at the Bataclan concert hall, where the US band Eagles of Death Metal was playing.
They ended the lives of dozens more at Parisian restaurants and cafes, and one person near the Stade de France football stadium, where spectators were watching France play Germany.
Macron is due to visit every attack site before presiding over a remembrance ceremony at a memorial garden in central Paris.
The sole surviving member of the 10-person jihadist cell that staged the attacks, 36-year-old Salah Abdeslam, is serving life in jail. The other nine attackers blew themselves up or were killed by police.
“France over these years has been able to stand united and overcome it all,” Hollande told AFP in a recent interview.
The ex-president was whisked out of the crowd at the Stade de France before re-appearing on national television later that night, describing what had happened as a “horror”.
He declared France “at war” with the jihadists and their self-proclaimed caliphate, then straddling Syria and Iraq.
Source: CNA
