[BUZZFEED] PARIS -- As Parisians woke up to surreally empty streets on Saturday, they confronted an uneasy question -- how could France's security services have failed to prevent the previous evening's terrorist attack, the worst in Europe for a decade, just months after allowing another?
The highly coordinated nature of Friday's attacks, in which at least eight assailants launched near-simultaneous assaults in six different locations across Paris, killing over 120 people, has raised questions about whether French counterterrorism units received any warnings that an attack was imminent. Though all but one of the assailants detonated suicide vests, French President Francois Hollande declared within hours that they were ISIS militants directed from abroad. French media reported that one of them was previously known to police.
"We were expecting something. We knew it was coming," said one western diplomat who spoke to BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the subject. "The fact that we failed to stop it is definitely a failure. But you can't imagine the number of attacks we have stopped. This was the nightmare scenario. The targets were all soft targets. How can you protect against people determined to attack a bar or concert?"
At the Place de la RÄ‚Å publique, a few minutes from Bataclan, where at least 100 people were killed on Friday, Parisians gathered to leave candles and flowers at a makeshift memorial. A banner hung reading "J'ETRE HUMAIN," an ungrammatical pun on the "Je suis Charlie" rallying cry from the January killings. Graffiti artists painted the city's Latin motto, "Fluctuat nec mergitur": "Tossed, but not sunk." |