November 2015 Paris attacks

On the evening of 13 November 2015, a coordinated series of terrorist attacks struck Paris and its northern suburb of Saint-Denis, France. Three teams of assailants carried out six attacks beginning at 21:16: suicide bombings outside the Stade de France during a France–Germany football match, shootings at cafés and restaurants across the 10th and 11th arrondissements, and a mass shooting and hostage-taking at the Bataclan theatre, where the American band Eagles of Death Metal was performing to roughly 1,500 people. The attacks killed 130 people and injured 416, with 90 of the dead at the Bataclan alone. Seven attackers died during the attacks, either shot by police or by detonating suicide vests. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in French history and the deadliest in the European Union since the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

At the Stade de France, three explosions occurred between 21:16 and 21:53 after security stopped the bombers from entering the stadium; one bystander and all three bombers were killed. Beginning around 21:25, gunmen fired from a rented car on the Le Carillon bar, Le Petit Cambodge restaurant, Café Bonne Bière, and La Belle Équipe, killing 39 people combined; one attacker then detonated an explosive vest inside the Comptoir Voltaire café, killing himself and injuring fifteen people. At the Bataclan, gunmen opened fire on the audience and took hostages, leading to a standoff with police that ended with a police assault just after midnight; two attackers were killed and all remaining hostages were rescued without injury. Ninety people died at the Bataclan, most within the attack's first twenty minutes.

French President François Hollande described the attacks as an act of war, and the Islamic State claimed responsibility on 14 November 2015, citing retaliation for French airstrikes against the group in Syria and Iraq. Investigators determined the attacks were planned in Syria and organized by a terrorist cell based in Brussels, Belgium; most attackers were French- or Belgian-born, and two held Iraqi nationality. A police raid on a Saint-Denis apartment on 18 November killed the plot's suspected lead operative along with two others. A tenth participant, Salah Abdeslam, had driven bombers to the Stade de France but did not detonate his own explosive vest; he evaded capture until his arrest on 18 March 2016 during an anti-terrorism raid in the Molenbeek area of Brussels. Jawad Bendaoud was separately arrested on 18 November 2015 for providing lodging to the plot's organizers and was later referred for trial on a charge of concealing terrorist criminals.

The trial of 20 men accused of planning or assisting the attacks opened in Paris on 8 September 2021 in a custom-built courtroom and heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses and victims over roughly nine months. It concluded on 29 June 2022 with the conviction of all 20 defendants. Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the attack teams, was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to life without parole; of his 19 co-defendants, eighteen were convicted on terrorism-related charges and one was convicted of a lesser fraud charge.

France declared a nationwide state of emergency, later extended for months, and launched airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Raqqa, Syria, within two days. The government imposed border checks, temporarily banned public demonstrations, and granted police expanded search and detention powers; landmarks including the Eiffel Tower and Disneyland Paris closed for several days. Survivors' psychological trauma persisted for years afterward; Bataclan survivor and graphic novelist Fred Dewilde, who documented his experience in several graphic novels, died by suicide in May 2024, nine years after the attack.