At least 46 people were killed late Friday after gunmen opened fire at three locations in central Paris and fled in a car. They later took around 100 people hostage in a concert hall, police said.
At about the same time, two explosions were heard at or near the the Stade de France, the national stadium, where Germany and France were holding a soccer match, the Associated Press reports. It was not immediately clear if the two events were related.
According to the Associated Press, a police official said 11 people were killed in a Paris restaurant in the 10th arrondissement, and about 35 killed in the Bataclan theatre, where a hostage-taking is under way.
The newspaper Liberation said officials speaking over a loudspeaker at the stadium asked the crowd to evacuated calmly. French President Francois Hollande was at the game at the time and left to deal with the crisis.
Police said at least 35 people were killed in the multiple attacks, the Associated Press reported.
The shootings occurred in the adjoining 10th and 11th districts on the right bank of the Seine in central Paris outside the restaurant Le Petit Cambodia and the bar Le Carillon.
The French newspaper Liberation quotes a witness as saying two armed men got out of a car parked in the street and began firing. They then jumped back into the vehicle and fled.
Vincent Berthezene, a production assistant for France2 TV tweeted that shots from a Kalashnikov were fired from a car. “Bodies are on the ground,” he writes.
A few minutes later, gunfire broke out near the Bataclan Boulevard Voltaire, southeast of the initial incident, as hostages were taken at the Bataclan concert hall.
USA Today
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