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Post by Admin on Nov 14, 2015 21:19:28 GMT
The Trophée Eric Bompard event has now been cancelled following the deadly attacks that left at least 127 people dead on Friday in Paris, the sports governing body announced Saturday morning. At first the organizers announced that the competition would continue on Saturday, but just hours after that statement was released, it appeared the International Skating Union was given direction from the French government to cancel the event. "The Minister of Interior Affairs of France, Bernard Cazeneuve, and the Mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppe, have informed the French Figure Skating Federation (FFSG) that the competition at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating event 'Trophee Eric Bompard 2015' in Bordeaux has to be cancelled due to the state of emergency and national mourning days in France," a new statement from the ISU said. Earlier Saturday, the ISU expressed its sympathy for the victims, but initially decided to continue with the Grand Prix event following a minute of silence before the free programs on Saturday.
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Post by Admin on Nov 15, 2015 19:59:48 GMT
French police have identified the first attacker out of the three teams of gunmen who carried out the worst ever attacks ever visited on Paris, which killed 129 people and wounded hundreds more. The Islamic State group has claimed the carnage carried at some of the French capital's most popular night-spots, including a sold-out concert hall, at restaurants and bars and outside France's national stadium. The seven attackers -- six blew themselves up and one was shot by police -- are the first to ever carry out suicide bombings on French soil and, unlike those who killed 17 in Paris in January, were unknown to security services. Investigators in France, Belgium, Greece and Germany are now trying to find out who these men were, how they carried out such a vast coordinated attack, and why. Police have identified one of the gunmen who blew himself up at the Bataclan concert hall, the scene of the bloodiest attack where 89 people were killed, as 29-year-old Paris native Omar Ismail Mostefai. His father and 34-year-old brother have been taken into custody by police and a source close to the probe said investigators are now searching the homes of other friends and relatives of the killer. Mostefai, whose identity was confirmed using a severed fingertip, was known as being close to radical Islam, but had never been linked to terrorism. Police said the attackers appeared to be "seasoned, at first sight, and well trained" and were investigating whether they had ever been to fight in Syria, where IS has proclaimed a caliphate along with territory in neighbouring Iraq. The Paris attacks were "prepared, organised and planned overseas, with help from inside (France)," French President Francois Hollande said. Belgian police have arrested several people over links to the Paris attacks in a huge sweep, including one who was in the French capital at the time of the attacks. The arrests -- local media said three people had been detained -- took place in the poor Brussels district of Molenbeek that has been linked to several other terror plots in Europe. Police in Belgium, which has the highest number of citizens per-capita who have gone to fight for IS in Europe, have opened a formal terrorism investigation.
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Post by Admin on Nov 16, 2015 19:47:39 GMT
French officials said Friday’s attacks on Paris were ordered from Syria and launched from neighboring Belgium as the country’s air force bombed Islamic State’s Raqqa stronghold in response to the worst act of terrorism Europe has suffered in a decade. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told France 2 television that the extremist group, which has also claimed responsibility for the blasts in Beirut and the downing of a Russian passenger jet in Egypt, is urging people based in Belgium “to act on French territory and in other European cities.” Ten French fighter jets hit targets Sunday evening in Syria, hitting a command center of the Islamic State in Raqqa, according to the Defense ministry. France is currently the only European power conducting major combat operations over both Iraq and Syria. Islamic State said the Paris attacks were payback for France’s extended military involvement in the Middle East. With Parisians on edge less than a year after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, European capitals are on high alert. A manhunt is intensifying for Abdeslam Salah, a 26-year-old suspect born in Brussels, as French investigators are in the Belgian city chasing down leads. Security agencies across Europe and the U.S. are racing to piece together how teams of coordinated gunmen and suicide bombers evaded heightened security to strike in the heart of one of Europe’s most heavily-policed cities. The total number of people who carried out and provided support for the assaults, which killed at least 129 people in more than half a dozen locations, is still unclear, according to a French government official who asked not to be identified in line with internal policy. Seven attackers died on Friday; officials have so far identified three, and are still in the process of determining who the others were. In the meantime, details are emerging about the extent of Islamic State’s involvement.
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Post by Admin on Nov 17, 2015 19:48:58 GMT
The discussions flowed from Islamic State leaders in Syria to recipients in Europe, apparently including the Brussels-based terror cell French authorities now believe carried out Friday’s attacks in Paris, said the official, who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the investigation into the coordinated shootings and bombings that killed 129 people and wounded hundreds more. But no specific time or place for an assault was mentioned, and the threat sounded similar to other signals picked up by European and American authorities, the official said. And then the line went silent, because the militants switched in September from open communication sources to so-called PS4 embedded devices -- such as Sony PlayStation 4 equipment -- that use encryption and block authorities from tapping them, the official said. “The French were trying to find out anything more about the chatter, and they got behind it,” the official said. “But it went bad.” The revelation of intelligence that pointed to a possible attack came on a day of intensive police operations in Belgium and France to hunt down a fugitive suspected of involvement in last week’s strike and to clamp down on dozens of other alleged extremists. Also on Monday, French President Francois Hollande told his compatriots that France was now “at war” with Islamic State. In a rare address to both chambers of the French legislature, Hollande said he would seek to extend France’s declared state of emergency, under which police can exercise broad powers, by three months. He asked lawmakers to amend the constitution to give the president more power when the country is faced with an immediate, serious threat, and to allow the government to strip French citizenship from people with dual nationality who are convicted of terrorism or “threatening the nation’s interests.”
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2015 19:51:12 GMT
The suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks was killed Wednesday in a massive predawn raid by French police commandos, two senior European officials said, after investigators followed leads that the fugitive militant was holed up north of the French capital and could be plotting another wave of violence. More than 100 police officers and soldiers stormed an apartment building in the suburb of Saint-Denis during a seven-hour siege that left at least two dead, including the suspected overseer of the Paris bloodshed, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, officials said. Abaaoud, a Belgian extremist, had once boasted that he could slip easily between Europe and strongholds of the Islamic State militant group in Syria. Paris prosecutor François Molins, speaking to reporters hours after the siege, said he could not provide the identities of the people killed at the scene. A French security official declined to confirm or deny that Abaaoud had died. But two senior European officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said they received confirmation from the French that Abaaoud was slain in the raid.
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