There is yet nothing definite in the motives and identities of those behind the savage attacks on soccer fans, concert goers and restaurant diners in Paris on Friday night, although suspicion among authorities in France and elsewhere in the world is falling on extremists who have launched earlier attacks there and who have shown the capability and determination to launch such murderous operations.
The shooting and bombing attacks on six different sites have claimed the lives of at least 153 civilians—indeed an “abomination,” as French President François Hollande said. The nature of the killings, as well as the suicide explosions that snuffed out the lives of the attackers, is simply unprecedented, and it is yet unknown if there are others among the killers who have escaped the police dragnet or slipped away through France’s borders.
The bloodbath in Paris—which only in January reeled from the attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that resulted in the killing of 10 including the editor, cartoonists and other members of the staff—represents a new and frightening level of terrorism with which not only France but also every other nation that values liberty, equality and fraternity has to come to grips. This bloodbath drives home the point that now, not only specific groups are vulnerable, and that now, everyone can conceivably be a target. This bloodbath deserves the strongest condemnation and the firmest resolve to stand fast and never to bow to terrorism.