Summary A curfew has been declared in the entire country.
PARIS (Dunya News/AFP) - At least 150 people have been killed while numerous were wounded in an unprecedented series of bombings and shootings in Paris on Friday, with death toll mounting continously. Police say they have exterminated five terrorists involved in the deadly attack while four officers were also killed during the ensuing gun battle. Many were killed at the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, only some 200 metres (yards) from the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where attackers took more than a 100 people captive and shot them. A curfew has been declared in the country after 71 years, previously being in 1944, by French President Francois Hollande who broke down into tears as he arrived at the grim scene. 1500 military personnel have also been deployed in the city to deal with the situation.
At least three people were killed near the Stade de France stadium in the north of the capital during a friendly football match between Germany and France. Hollande was atttending the match and was evacuated safely after the incident.
Spectators panic as stadium is evacuated
Hostages were taken and at around 2335 GMT, police stormed the venue accompanied by a series of explosions.
An AFP journalist heard multiple explosions.
One explosion was a suicide attack, several sources said.
Spectators being evacuated from stadium
"Terrorist attacks of an unprecedented level are underway across the Paris region," Hollande said in an emotional televised message.
"There are several dozen dead. It s a horror," he said.
One witness at the Bataclan described a scene of carnage at the concert hall.
"I saw 20 to 25 bodies lying on the floor and people were very badly injured, gunshot wounds," Julien Pierce told Europe 1 radio.
"Some of them were dead. Some of them were very badly wounded, but it was a bloodbath."
Hollande declared a state of emergency across the entire country and said the borders had been closed.
The military had been mobilised to reinforce police and ensure no further attacks took place, he said.
Another attack was reported at a Cambodian restaurant called Petit Cambodge, not far from the Bataclan venue in northeast Paris.
Counter-terrorism prosecutors said they had opened a preliminary investigation.
Lights of France s landmark and Paris s greatest international attraction, the Eiffel Tower, were also put out as citizens mourned the deadly attack and in respect of the victims of the bloody terrorist plot.
Lights go out at Paris s central attraction as city mourns the heavy loss of lives
Eyetwitness accounts
A French radio reporter who was inside the Bataclan theatre that came under attack Friday gave a harrowing account of the "10 horrific minutes" when black-clothed gunmen wielding AK-47s entered and fired calmly and randomly at hundreds of screaming concertgoers.
"It was a bloodbath," Julien Pierce, a reporter for France s Europe 1 radio station, told CNN.
"People yelled, screamed and everybody lying on the floor, and it lasted for 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 horrific minutes where everybody was on the floor covering their head(s)."
"We heard so many gunshots and the terrorists were very calm, very determined and they reloaded three or four times their weapons and they didn t shout anything. They didn t say anything."
Pierce recounted seeing 20 to 25 bodies on the floor and others very badly injured.
Police sources later said at least 100 people were killed at the attack on the concert venue.
Another witness said gunmen shouting "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest) fired into the terrified crowd who had gathered to watch a concert by the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan theatre in eastern Paris on Friday night.
Pierce said he was lucky to be near the front of the stage as the gunmen, wearing black clothes and wielding AK-47s, opened fire.
"People started to try to escape to walk on people on the floor and try to find the exits, and I found an exit when the terrorists reloaded their guns in the meantime, and I climbed on the stage and we found an exit."
The journalist said he took a teenage girl who was bleeding heavily and carried her to a taxi where he told the driver to take her to hospital.
He said that as he was speaking to CNN some of his friends were still hiding inside the theatre.
"They are hiding in some kind of room in the dark and they text me, and they are very afraid, of course, and they are waiting for the police to intervene, but it s been over two hours now and this is terrible."
Later in the night police stormed the venue. Three suspected assailants were shot dead during the assault.
Pierce said he saw the face of one of the gunmen, who was probably 20 to 25 years old.
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Sites where killings took place
Asked if he could hear what language they were speaking, he replied, "Nothing. I heard nothing, just the yelling and screaming of the people. They didn t shout anything. They didn t say anything. They said nothing. They just shot. They just shoot. They were just shooting at people."
"What happened was terrible. I mean, honestly, 15 minutes, 10 minutes of gunshots firing randomly in a small concert room. I mean, it s not a huge concert room. It s a small one. Two thousand people were there maximum and it was -- it was horrible."
At the Stade de France, Hollande was attending the match and had to be hastily evacuated.
Spectators flooded the pitch as news of the attacks spread before organisers started an evacuation.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, called for residents to stay at home.
"We heard gunfire, 30 seconds of fire, it was interminable, we thought it was fireworks," said Pierre Montfort, who lives near rue Bichat, where the Cambodian restaurant is located.
"Everyone was on the floor, no one moved," said another eyewitness who had been at the Petit Cambodge restaurant.
"A girl was carried by a young man in his arms. She appeared to be dead."
The toll "will be much heavier" than the initial confirmed deaths, a security source said.
Camille, 25, said: "My sister is in the Bataclan. I phoned her. She said they opened fire. And then she hung up."
An AFP reporter outside the Bataclan said there were police carrying machine-guns and more than 20 police wagons with their lights flashing around the scene.
Hollande
Speaking outside the the Bataclan, French President Hollande stated:
"We wanted to be here among all those who saw these atrocious things, to say that we are going to fight and our fight will be merciless, because these terrorists that are capable of such atrocities need to know that they will be confronted by a France that is determined, unified and pulled together and a France that will not let itself be overawed even if today it is expressing an infinite amount of emotion at this drama and this tragedy, which was an abomination and a barbaric act."
French President speaks outside the concert hall
Hollande travelled to the interior ministry to set up a crisis cell with other ministers.
"The president of the Republic, the prime minister, the interior minister are in a inter-ministerial crisis cell," the government said in a statement.
The president s office said an exceptional council of ministers would be called at midnight.
Hollande addresses the nation after attack
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union chief Jean-Claude Juncker said they were "deeply shocked" by the attacks.
France has been on high alert since the terrorist attacks in January against the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket that left 17 dead.
Several other attacks have been foiled through the year.
More than 500 French fighters are thought to be with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, according to official figures, while 250 have returned and some 750 expressed a desire to go there.
The government announced last week that it was restoring border checks as a security measure for UN climate talks that start in Paris at the end of this month.
This is a developing story and will be updated shortly
