PARIS – France marks a decade next week since suffering its worst attack, with the only surviving attacker jailed for life and plans for a long-term memorial.
Jihadists killed 130 people in shootings and suicide bombings in and around Paris on the night of November 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 just outside the capital, where crowds were watching France play Germany.
Several ceremonies are to mark 10 years since the attacks on Thursday, with President Emmanuel Macron expected to speak.
The sole surviving member of the 10-person jihadist cell that staged the attacks, 36-year-old Salah Abdeslam, is serving life in jail, after nine fellow attackers blew themselves up or were killed by police.
“France over these years has been able to stand united and overcome it all,” Francois Hollande, who was president at the time, told AFP in a recent interview.
Hollande was in the crowd at the football stadium when the attacks erupted. He was whisked out of the audience before re-appearing on national television later that night, describing what had happened as a “horro.r.
He declared France “at war” with the jihadists and their self-proclaimed caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq.
Hollande testified at the 148-day trial that led to Abdeslam being jailed for life in 2022.
He said he remembered telling the defendants, who also included suspects accused of plotting or offering logistical support, that they had been given defence lawyers despite having committed “the unforgivable.”
