As many continue to mourn the tragedy of the Paris attacks, Isobel Bowdery survivor has shed light on how that horrific night unfolded. Isobel Bowdery, a 22-year-old graduate from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, shared a firsthand account of what the scene was like in the Bataclan concert hall on Friday in a Facebook post that has since drawn about 3 million likes. (It's no longer view able to the public.)
In her post, Bowdery says the evening started off like any ordinary night at a fun rock concert. When the attackers came through the front entrance of the Bataclan, she says, at first everyone in the crowd thought it was part of the act.
The moment the shots rang out at the concert hall 01:09, But that moment of confusion quickly gave way to terror.
"It wasn't just a terrorist attack, it was a massacre," she writes. In her post, Bowdery reflects on the crowd being surrounded by a spray of bullets.
"The way they meticulously aimed at shot people around the standing area I was in the center of without any consideration for human life. It didn't feel real," she writes.
Through the chaos, Bowdery says she managed to stay alive by pretending to play dead for more than an hour, "holding my breath and trying not to move."
after that Bowdery spoke on Wednesday to CNN's Anderson Cooper, about how she handled those tense moments: "It was important that if I was going to die, if the next bullet was for me, then I left saying I love you. So I said it to every single person I've ever loved. And in that way it felt OK to die, because I had love in my heart." READ MORE IN LINK http://dudetoday.com/3095.html
The scale of the near-simultaneous bombings and shootings in Paris has left France reeling in shock.With nearly 200 people dead, along with eight suicide bombers, it is Europe's worst terrorist attack since the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
It raises new, pressing questions about the ability of Western security forces to prevent such random carnage.French President Francois Hollande called it an "act of war" organised by Islamic State (IS) militants.
Why did this happen in Paris?
Paris has been on heightened alert since the January terror attacks, when Islamist gunmen attacked the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a policewoman and a Jewish supermarket, killing 17 people.
Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four hostages in the supermarket before being shot dead by police, claimed to be acting in the name of IS.
For many years some deprived housing estates in the suburbs of Paris and other cities have been fertile ground for Islamic extremists. Jihad has appeared seductive for some alienated young Muslims in areas of high unemployment and urban neglect.
More than 500 French Muslims have gone to fight with jihadists in Syria and Iraq, experts say - more than from any other Western country.
French warplanes have repeatedly attacked IS fighters in Syria and Iraq, as part of the US-led campaign against the group.
What does the choice of targets suggest?
They were soft civilian targets in Paris - the intention was evidently to kill many people randomly.
The high-profile football match at the Stade de France was clearly a potential target. But the fact that three suicide bombers blew themselves up nearby at three eating places was unusual. France has not experienced such near-simultaneous bombings before.Then the attack on Bataclan concert hall - again by suicide bombers - was also designed to kill ordinary young French people having fun on a Friday night. It happened during a rock concert. More than 80 rock fans died in the mayhem.
Was this like previous terror attacks in cities?
According to Mr Joshi, the closest parallel is the Mumbai (Bombay) attack of 2008, carried out by Pakistan-based Islamist militants.They brought terror to the streets of Mumbai, staging simultaneous gun and bomb attacks across the city.
In Europe, the Paris carnage has reminded people of the devastating train bombings in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), which were also carried out by Islamist militants.
Jews were targeted in some previous Islamist terror attacks - in Paris in January, in the attack on the Brussels Jewish Museum in 2014, and in the 2012 shootings by Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah. He killed a rabbi and three small children at a Jewish school.
There have been similar suicide attacks in Syria and Iraq, where militants have used up all their bullets, then blown themselves up in a crowd, he said. But never before in France.But Mr Joshi said these were not necessarily Middle East war veterans, or weapons experts."They were prepared, yes, but they have not proven a high level of marksmanship - their preparation may have been quite basic."
Was it a French security blunder?
Neither Mr Joshi nor Mr Van Ostaeyen thinks so.
"You can't guard all soft targets," Mr Joshi said. "It's more about responding to events, having communications between the arms of the state, strong leadership, controlling the flow of information, to minimize panic."According to Mr Van Ostaeyen: "France has done everything it could do... it's too early to say they could have prevented it".A key question is whether IS managed to organise the attacks from outside France, or whether it was local French Islamist inspired by IS.
Some French commentators recalled the Moscow theater siege of 2002, when Chechen militants stormed a live show. The attack and bungled Russian rescue left 130 hostages and 40 militants dead.
French journalist Agnes Poirier told the BBC that the 13 November bombers struck at "modest, working-class neighborhoods, not tourist sites" in Paris.
The 10th and 11th districts (arrondissements) are "very diverse - that makes it more poignant for the French", she said.
Claiming responsibility for the carnage in Paris, IS said it was a "capital of abomination and perversion". It called the concert-goers "pagans".
Shashank Joshi, a security policy expert at London's Royal United Services Institute, said there was clearly a "cultural" aspect to the choice of targets.
"It was a deliberate choice of leisure venues - where people relax," he told the BBC. The bombers went for crowded places, portrayed by IS as immoral, he said.
