More than 12 hours after the coordinated gun and bomb attacks that left at least 128 people dead in Paris, very little detail was known about the victims, other than that a number are likely to be young people.
The biggest toll among the six attacks was the 87 killed at the Bataclan theatre, where US rock band Eagles of Death Metal were performing. Witnesses spoke of seeing large numbers of young fans gunned down.
The majority of the photographs of missing people posted by anguished relatives and friends showed people in their 20s and 30s, many along with messages that they had been attending the Bataclan show. Twitter was the main conduit for such appeals, with dozen of new and desperate updates every minute to the hashtag #rechercheParis, mainly in French.
It was the top-trending tag on Twitter, with almost 2m messages.
“We’re looking for our friend Grégory, who was at the Bataclan last night,” read one, with a photo of a young man. “I’ve heard nothing from my sister since yesterday evening – any information please?” read another, showing the picture of a young woman. “No news about my friend Victor Munoz, who was at rue de Charonne. Thanks for your help,” said another.
Among the many injured at the concert was Emma Parkinson, a 19-year-old from Australia, who was named in Australian media reports. The country’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, earlier confirmed at least one Australian had been injured.
The Foreign Office in London has said it is in close touch with French authorities and was urgently investigating whether there were any British victims.
Sweden’s foreign ministry said one national from the country was known to have been killed and another injured. “We have information that one person of Swedish nationality was wounded by gunfire and another was killed,” ministry spokesman Johan Tegel told Swedish television.
“Our ambassador in Paris is trying to confirm this information with French authorities.”
The reported death toll so far is 87 at the Bataclan theatre; 18 shot dead at a cafe in the Boulevard de Charonne; one at Boulevard Voltaire; five at Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, where another cafe was attacked; and 14 in a gun attack on two restaurants in the Rue Alibert.
At the Stade de France, where a series of blasts went off near the stadium where France was playing Germany in an international football friendly, the Paris prosecutor said “some” people were killed, possibly three. However, it is not clear whether they were attackers or victims.
A further 99 people are reported to have been seriously injured.
Among those confirmed to have survived are the members of Eagles of Death Metal, despite the band’s Facebook page saying on Friday night that members of the group and their crew were missing.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper quoted the brother of the band’s drummer, Atlanta native Julian Dorio, as saying the group escaped. “They saw a man with a machine gun just opening fire,” his brother, Michael Dorio, told the paper. The musicians threw themselves to the floor and escaped via a backstage door, where they went to a nearby police station, he said.
The blues/garage rock band were formed by Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme, who fronts the better known Queens of the Stone Age. Homme was not taking part in the European tour.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/14/paris-attacks-victims-little-known-12-hours-after
