FRANCE MOURNS

Posted on 11/16/2015 | About France

Thousands of French troops deployed around Paris on Sunday and tourist sites stood shuttered in one of the most visited cities on Earth, while investigators questioned relatives of a suspected suicide bomber involved in the country's deadliest violence in decades.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for Friday's attacks at a stadium, a concert hall and Paris cafes that left 129 people dead and over 350 wounded, 99 of them seriously. The attack had global impact. Security was heightened across France, across Europe's normally open borders, even across the Atlantic to New York, and how to respond to the Paris attacks became a key point among US Democratic presidential hopefuls at a debate Saturday night. Countries around the world doused their national buildings in the French colours of blue, white and red to honour the victims - or, like the Eiffel Tower and New York's Empire State Building, went dark to express their sorrow.

President Barack Obama on Sunday called the terror attacks in Paris an “attack on the civilized world.'' Obama, speaking at a G-20 summit in Turkey focusing on fighting terrorism, pledged US solidarity with France in the effort to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice. President Francois Hollande has said that France, which is already bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq in a US-led coalition, would increase its military efforts to crush IS and be “merciless” against the extremists.

With 3,000 extra troops mobilized to protect Paris, French authorities laboured Sunday to identify the suicide bombers and hunt potential accomplices still at large. French authorities are particularly concerned about the threat from hundreds of French Islamic radicals who have travelled to Syria and returned home, possibly with dangerous skills. On the streets, the entire nation was enveloped in mourning. Flags were lowered and Notre Dame Cathedral - closed to tourists like many Paris sites - planned a special church service later Sunday for families of the victims. Well-wishers heaped flowers and notes on a monument to the dead in the neighbourhood where attackers sprayed gunfire on cafe diners and concert-goers.

Yet even in their grief, residents were defiant about the lifestyle that has made their city a world treasure. Olivier Bas was among several hundred who gathered late Saturday at the site of the Bataclan hall massacre. Although Paris was quiet and jittery, Bas intended to go out for a drink - “to show that they won't win.''