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CNN NEWSROOM

Paris Attacks; France on State of Emergency. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired November 14, 2015 - 01:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JOHN VAUSE, CNN NEWSROOM ANCHOR: Coordinated series of attacks which killed at least 153 people in six different locations in Paris Barnavit (ph) suburbs.

ISHA SESAY, CNN NEWSROOM ANCHOR: Authorities say eight attackers are dead, seven of whom blew themselves up. It is still unclear, however, as to how many attackers were involved in total.

VAUSE: Some of the gunmen were armed with AK-47s. Others reportedly had explosive belts. Three explosions were heard at the Stade de France where the French president was watching a soccer match. An intelligence source tells us at least one appears to have been a suicide bombing. At least four people died at that stadium.

SESAY: But the worst of the carnage was at the Bataclan Concert Hall where at least 112 people were killed. Witnesses describe it as a bloodbath, saying the gunman entered the crowded theater during the concert and shot at them for at least ten minutes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Gunfire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: A short time later gunfire could be heard as police stormed the theater to rescue hostages. Four attackers were killed in the raid. President Francois Hollande said France will be ruthless in its response and praised first responders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALE TRANSLATOR: I also want to express my admiration to all these services, the doctors, firefighters, all those people who've come to assistance, their admiral work. I'm shocked, I was shocked by what they've seen and heard there. Amongst those who've seen these atrocities, these terrorists who, pitiless, who are in France, which is determined, united and which will not be stopped with this emotion, regards to this drama and this tragedy of the population.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The French president sounding, and there was a defiance there. But ISIS has applauded the attacks on Twitter, although there has been no official claim of responsibility.

VAUSE: Security incredibly tight right now in Paris. An extra 1,500 soldiers are being deployed throughout the city. These attacks underscore the challenges authorities are facing. Paris had already beefed up security ahead of a upcoming global climate change summit.

SESAY: Well, at France's national stadium outside Paris, fans were cheering along at a football match between Germany and France last night. And then they heard this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: SPEAKING IN FRENCH.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: And that, that was the sound of two of the three blasts that went off near the stadium.

VAUSE: Now that soccer match continued until full-time. They played it out, not knowing exactly what was happening around them. The French president was there among the soccer fans. He was evacuated to safety at half-time. Our sources told CNN at least one of the blasts appears to have been a suicide bombing. And one witness says he was simply in awe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE 1: SPEAKING IN FRENCH.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE 2: There was confusion. We heard two explosions. But at the beginning, I thought that they were agricultural bombs. And there had been lots of rumor inside the stadium. We were at Gate E. It exploded just nearby. It's true that it was noisy, but I thought that it was only agricultural bombs. But then there were rumors. We heard about a shooting. There was a lot of confusion inside the stadium, a very frightening crowd crush happened with people on the ground.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: And customers at a Cambodian restaurant in the city took cover behind each other as bullets started to fly through the windows.

SESAY: One woman inside Le Petit Camodge says she reached for a woman on the floor, only to discover she'd been shot in the chest. Fourteen people died at that restaurant. At least two other restaurants and a bar in the popular 10th District were also attacked.

Well, a Paris journalist inside the Bataclan Concert Hall described it as ten horrific minutes as gunmen opened fire. Concert goers were watching an American rock band perform when terrorists stormed the building. The journalist says two attackers were calm, determined and firing randomly. They killed at least 112 people before the siege came to an end. VAUSE: Now four attackers died when police raided the concert hall.

In all, authorities say it saved about 100 hostages. Another man who was inside the Bataclan during the ambush explains what he saw.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The concert started for half an hour when we heard the noise, like firecrackers. We turned around and then we saw two young guys. They were pretty far away, but they were two guys with Kalashinkov rifles. They were shouting at the crowd. We all laid down on the floor. It was panic. There were screams. And they kept shouting again and again. Over on the right side of the stage one door was open, and then a man who had his apartment facing the roof opened his window and he let us all crawl through. And we stayed in there, in the dark, waiting for things to pass. But we could keep on hearing the noise of the explosions, shouting, guns and screaming without really knowing what was going on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Let's go live now for the very latest on the streets of Paris. And Fred Pleitgen is there. So, Fred, what's the very latest we're hearing about the gunman -- or the terrorists? Eight have been killed, several of them suicide bombers, but the possibility that there may be more people involved, and they're still out there.

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, exactly, John. That's one of the things that certainly is still out there is that it isn't really clear whether or not those eight people who were killed in these raids, whether or not that's actually all of the attackers in these various locations where all of this took place.

Of course we know that there were attacks in six locations here in Paris, most of them here in central Paris. So one of them, of course, then, in and Saint-Denis with those suicide attacks going off there. But certainly you can still feel here that there is still a huge presence of law enforcement on the streets. There's, of course, still also a huge presence of law enforcement inside the Bataclan Theater that you see in the back drop behind me. A lot of forensic work, of course, still going on there as well.

And you can literally feel the nervousness here on the streets, I would even say the fear here on the streets as people are not sure whether or not there might still be gunmen at large. So that's certainly something that's weighing on people. As you know, there's a state of emergency that's in place for the entire country. Many shops are not opening here today. Many public buildings not opening either. So you can still feel that nervousness where it's unclear whether or not people are still at large and, quite frankly, also where all of this came from, whether or not this was some sort of plot by some sort of Islamist organization or whether it is something else.

There are still so many unanswered questions as we get into the early morning hours of Saturday morning. And it really is, it's a very different feeling that we had in January when the Charlie Hebdo killings happened. Back then, there was demonstrations. There were people going out, there were people showing their solidarity. Right now it really is a much more subdued mood as many people are opting to stay inside, to try and stay off the streets, John.

SESAY: And, Fred, it's Isha here. One of the questions many people will be asking, especially in light of the stepped up security post the Charlie Hebdo attacks, is whether there was any kind of advance warning, anything missed by French counter-terrorism officials?

PLEITGEN: It's -- yeah, that certainly is going to be one of the big questions coming up. And one of the things that you guys were saying, which is absolutely true, is security in this city was beefed up anyway because, of course, you do have the COP21 that's set to happen here very soon. And so they were expecting many Heads of State to be on the ground here. There certainly was beefed up security to begin with. The big questions, were there any leads? Was there any sort of intelligence that could have indicated that, perhaps, some of this, something like this might be in the works.

And if you look at what happened here, you look at the sophistication, the apparent sophistication of the plot that unfolded here with several attackers, with coordinated -- or it seems like coordinated attacks, with these attackers also wearing explosive vests or some sort of explosive devices on their bodies -- that is going to be the big question -- whether or not there was some sort of warning out there, whether or not, perhaps, there was some sort of cell that might have been under observation, whether or not it was clear whether a plot was forming or whether it might have been what many in the intelligence community call sort of chatter that didn't really lead them to conclude that there might be a specific plot underway.

So big questions that, of course, are being asked. And it is going to be the next couple of days, the next couple of weeks where, surely, we'll be able to tell what degree of coordination there was, what degree of sophistication there was in this plot that unfolded here today.

VAUSE: Fred, what are the officials there saying about the possibility of a second wave of attacks that, where anything like that could be imminent? Or is that just one of many concerns they have right now?

PLEITGEN: Well, it's, yeah, it's -- it certainly is one of many concerns. And it certainly is rumors that are out here that something like that could happen, simply because it is, at this point, not clear whether or not all of the attackers are at large or whether any of the attackers are still at large or whether or not all of them, the eight who were killed, were, in fact, all of the ones who participated in all of this.

And if you recall back to the Charlie Hebdo killings at the beginning of the year, that also was something where it unfolded in waves, where you had the initial attack there on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, then you had the attack on the Jewish supermarket a couple of days later. So, certainly, that is something that is a concern. Look, this city is in absolute shock at this point. They had the Charlie Hebdo killings at the beginning of the year and now, just months later, something much more tragic, much bigger has happened again here.

So, certainly, there are a lot of rumors out here. There's a lot of fears out here. And there's people who, at this point in time, want answers as to who's behind this and how big a network this might be, John.

SESAY: Fred, given our concern about the possibility or at least the fear of a second wave of attacks, I've got to ask you about, not just security there on the streets of Paris right now, but what are we hearing about the situation at train stations and airports, at the border areas. What do we know?

PLEITGEN: Yeah. Well, all of that's been beefed up, certainly at train stations, at airports as well. But generally what's happened here is that the security forces in general have been beefed up considerably. You do have a lot more police, of course, on the streets. You have a lot more visible police on the streets than you normally do. But you also have a large deployment of the military that is on the ground here as well, some 1,500, the extra personnel from the military that are on the ground, that are patrolling. And they are very, very visible -- to try and give people that sense of security that they are protected when the walk around the streets here. So that's certainly something that we can very much see. And, of course, on the one hand, there is a real fear out there that there might still be people at large. But on the other hand, of course, it's also to calm people down a little bit, to take the fear of actually going outside.

VAUSE: Fred Pleitgen live there, 11 minutes passed 7:00 on a Saturday morning, 11 minutes passed 1:00 Eastern Time here in the United States. Fred, thank you. And Fred had made a good point to clarify because we did hear from the French president saying the borders are closed.

SESAY: Yes, yes.

VAUSE: Gave everyone the impression that it was Fortress France, the whole place was closed off. That is not the case, but certainly security is a lot tougher than it was. Planes are landing. People are getting in. It's not sealed off, but it is a lot harder to get in there, a lot more security checks going in and coming out, going in and coming out from the country there --

SESAY: Yeah, right. Good point to --

VAUSE: -- at this point in time.

SESAY: -- to emphasize for our viewers who, we know, are watching us from around the world. Well, one person who made it out of the Bataclan concert hall told Radio France that the shooters ended firing assault rifles and shouting, "Allahu Akbar" -- Arabic for "God is great."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: SPEAKING FRENCH. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Well, let's discuss this further with Stephen Moore and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. Steve is a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: And, Daveed is a counter-terrorism expert and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. But I'd like to start with you, Stephen, because we are getting this new information that eight of the gunmen are now dead. Seven of them are suicide bombers who, we're told by the prosecutors, blew themselves up. That does not seem, to me, like that is everybody directly involved in these attacks. If you look at the number of locations, the amount of damage, the amount of people killed in all this, would you say there are more gunmen out there?

STEPHEN MOORE, FORMER FBI AGENT: There are potentially more gunmen, but you know that eight people didn't do all this damage themselves. They had to get to the locations. They had to pace the locations. There may be dozens of people who --

VAUSE: That's the support network that we're, yeah.

MOORE: -- that are a support network. There could be other shooters out there. The first thing that they'll want to do is sift out from the victims terrorists who try to blend back into the group. And you may find here, I mean, we know already that they shouted, this is for Syria. Well, they didn't shout it in Arabic because people wouldn't have understood it. Likely you have some homegrown terrorists here, and so they'll speak French, they'll look French, they'll sound French and they can easily blend into the crowd. You drop your weapon and your rub blood on yourself and say, oh, my, God. Oh, my God.

SESAY: Daveed, telling to you to pick up on the point of the profile of these attackers. Another noticeable point that, at least at the Bataclan theater attack, they were not wearing masks, we're being told. I mean, what do you make of that, not wearing masks, shouting, "Allahu Akbar" and, but also we're told, seemingly young and also just very calm in the way they carried all this out?

DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS, FELLOW FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Yeah, a lot of interesting things to pull out here. The fact that at least some of them were wearing masks, what we have there is an eye witness account of the attackers that he saw, suggests that those attackers were on a suicide mission. Obviously, if you intend to keep on fighting, that makes a lot more sense to go ahead and put a mask on so you can slip into the crows, as Stephen had just said.

They're young, which tends to fit at least part of the profile of what we expect from attackers. They tend to be, you know, for attacks like this they tend to be males within a certain kind of age range. The calmness is very interesting and something that is a little bit to gage from eye witness attacks. They at least appeared calm to the eyewitnesses. But one of the big things that people are speculating on right now, which is significant, is to what extent did these guys receive training? To what extent where they, instead, self-trained or self-starters. And this, to some extent, speaks to that point. Though, to me, the professionalism of the attacks and the fact that that they were able to avoid surveillance is much more significant in that regard.

VAUSE: Steve, I see you nodding your head in agreement --

MOORE: Yes.

VAUSE: -- with Daveed because, clearly, you -- I put this to you, I guess, last hour -- you don't learn this level of coordination or so by logging onto the Internet.

MOORE: No. These small unit tactics were very well practiced, very well executed. And what is, what we have found is that people say from France, as an example, might go over and fight for a while with ISIS on the battlefield, come back with combat skills and then use them back in Paris -- hypothetically. I'm not saying that this is going to be the case but that's what we're finding. And that's why you see the authorities being so severely careful with people who have gone over to terrorist training camps or terrorist groups and then come back.

VAUSE: Daveed, can I -- very quickly, there's been no claim of responsibility in this. But everyone's looking at ISIS. So it's either ISIS or al Qaeda. Pick your poison -- which one?

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: If it were my gut, I would go with ISIS. But we really don't know at this point in time. We really don't know. I mean, there's no claim of responsibility. That's fairly typical because we're not even 24 hours from the attack.

And the reason why I would lean on ISIS is because, to carry out a major attack like this means that al Qaeda would be shifting the world's attention in terms of military resources brought to bear in counter-terrorism operations away from ISIS and towards al Qaeda. And I think they kind of like waiting out this assault on ISIS which is losing more and more ground in Syria -- I mean, in Iraq. They just lost Sinjar.

So, to me, it doesn't make as much sense, given al Qaeda's strategy. But that being said, if you look at a lot of recent attacks, ranging from Charlie Hebdo to the attack in Bardo, which was an al Qaeda and not an ISIS attack, to the Norway attack, the Breivik attack in Oslo, the initial assumptions were wrong in all of those. So I'm really hesitant to --

VAUSE: Yeah, good point. Good point.

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: -- to weigh in too strongly.

VAUSE: Fair point.

SESAY: Stephen, weigh in. What are your thoughts?

MOORE: I believe it's ISIS. I worked al Qaeda for several years with the Bureau and, to me, al Qaeda is looking for bigger hits than this. And they always seem reticent to do -- this isn't small to us, but to them --

VAUSE: Well, it's small compared to 911, yeah.

MOORE: -- this would seem -- yes, this would seem small to them, and it might not give them enough credibility with their donors.

SESAY: Daveed, let me ask you about that in terms of the choice of targets here -- first of all, your read on the sites of these attacks.

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: In terms of the sites of the attack, look, there's a lot of speculation out there as to what the sites mean. I think that the more important thing than the specific sites is the technique that was being used. It was an urban warfare style of attack. You know, one that in terms of sites that were chosen, went through areas which had minimum security. It was designed to prolong the attack for an extended period. They took hostages and actually, rather than keeping them for a while, started executing them which is interesting and atypical. It doesn't match, for example, with what happened at the Westgate Mall in Kenya. But they're attacks that are very much not just on tourists but on France itself and designed to maximize casualties, maximize fear and maximize attention.

VAUSE: Daveed, thank you for that. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross giving us some perspective there from Washington. Daveed is a counter-terrorism expert. And also Steve, Steve Moore, who is a FBI Supervisory Special Agent. Thanks for being with us.

SESAY: Thank you.

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Thank you.

VAUSE: And we're hoping you're going to stick around and talk to us --

SESAY: Yeah, lots more to discuss.

MOORE: Will do.

VAUSE: -- a little bit more throughout the hour.

MOORE: Will do.

SESAY: Thank you.

VAUSE: Thank you. And in the meantime, we will take a short break. And we'll pick up on ISIS point when we're talking about the targets --

SESAY: Yeah.

VAUSE: -- which came under attack earlier this evening in Paris. We'll take a closer look at which venues were hit by these terrorists, who died, the numbers who were killed there and just why, maybe, they were targeted. (COMMERCIAL)

VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. It is 22 minutes passed 10:00 on a Friday night here in Los Angeles while in Paris it has been a night of terror. And France is now waking up to a country-wide state of emergency under a series of coordinated attacks which rocked the capital. At least 153 people were killed in 6 different locations, including one of the country's main sports stadiums.

SESAY: The deadliest assault was at the Bataclan concert hall were 112 lives were brutally taken. The Paris prosecutor says eight attackers are dead, seven of them in suicide blasts, but there is fear that other suspects may be at large. No one -- no one has yet taken responsibility. But President Francoise Hollande vows France will be ruthless in its response.

We want to give you a sense of exactly where all or this happened in Paris. We're talking about multiple attacks, different locations.

VAUSE: And at this point in time there does not seem any particular reason why these locations were targeted. But they were relatively close to each other, within a few miles, most of them anyway, and CNN's Tom Foreman has this overview.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All these attacks took place north of the traditional tourist areas in Paris along the Champs-Elysees, Notre Dame, that sort of thing. And the first one over here, when we talk about the Bataclan theater attack, this was really quite a short distance from the old Charlie Hebdo offices, as you can see. Bataclan theater holds about a thousand people, maybe a little bit more. It is a structure that would be considered a medium-size venue. And shortly before the concert began, the base player for the band, this American band from California, Tweeted out this photograph of the venue inside there. So you can get a little sense of what it was like.

From the street level, you can see that most of the buildings around it are a little bit taller than the theater itself. And you can see some of the view there on the street where, of course, many of the victims came out as they tried to flee and then later on, as they tried to triage people to see who was hurt and who had been killed.

As we move further, not terribly far away, a short car ride and not a bad walk even, you get to this restaurant, Le Petit Camodge. This is a popular restaurant in the area. It is in some tourist guide books. It's not really a tourist site, very much more of a local site. But it would be very crowded because it's very popular with young people there, Cambodian food being offered here, and also a very densely populated neighborhood here in the 10th arrondissement or neighborhood or district of Paris, as they would call it.

And then if we move on to the stadium, you're getting much further north here, but you're also getting to a much, much bigger crowd. It's a modern stadium, had an event underway, this soccer match -- 80,000 people at this stadium. And this is where we know there was a suicide bomber, according to the authorities. Why that suicide bomber did not find the opportunity to strike more people we don't know. It is a good thing that they did not. But that will be one of the many things they try to sort out as authorities go over this geography of where the attackers came from, how they wound up where they did and how they staged these attacks.

VAUSE: Tom Foremen there with that overview of exactly where all of this happened. And leaders from around the world have been expressing an outpouring of support for France. The U.S. president, Barak Obama, says it's not just an attack on Paris or the people of France but on all of humanity and the universal values we all share.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARAK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is heartbreaking situation. And obviously those of us here in the United States know what it's like. We've gone through these kinds of episodes ourselves. And whenever these kinds of attacks happened we've always been able to count on the French people to stand with us. They have been an extraordinary counter-terrorism partner and we intend to be there with them in that same fashion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Well, it is 10:26 p.m. here on the West Coast. We're live from Los Angeles. Our breaking news coverage of the Paris terror attacks continue after a short break. We'll have a live report from the shaken city as we learn more on this unprecedented tragedy. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL)

SESAY: Welcome back, everyone. You're watching our continuing live breaking news coverage of the deadly Paris terror attacks. It's just after 7:30 in the morning there.

VAUSE: At least 153 people were killed Friday night in a half-dozen highly coordinated attacks in the French capital and one of its suburbs. Right now there is a national state of emergency. France has tightened security at its borders and residents of Paris are being asked to stay indoors.

SESAY: Well, the Friday night attacks were unlike anything the city has seen before. Terrorist, some armed with AK-47s and possibly explosive belts attacked six locations including a restaurant, a stadium where the president was watching a football match and a concert hall packed with people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: SPEAKING IN FRENCH.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: That is the gunfire at the Bataclan theater as police stormed the building to try to rescue hostages. At least 112 people were killed in the attack there. Witnesses say gunmen randomly shot people for up to 15 minutes. Let's get the very latest from Paris now. Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen standing by once again.

So, Fred, in practical terms, what are these increased security measures which have been implemented? What will the people of Paris notice when they wake up in the next couple hours and look out onto the streets?

PLEITGEN: Yeah, John, well one of the first things they'll notice is there's going to be a lot more law enforcement on the streets than they're actually used to. I mean, it is something that you do see here normally on the streets as well, is that you'll have the odd soldier patrolling as well as the police. But now that has really increased a lot. Just going through the streets here you can see the amount of police vehicles that are on the streets, also the military patrolling the streets as well. Of course, some 1,500 soldiers have been mobilized, and that certainly is something that is -- will be noticeable.

And the interesting thing that we're seeing also, going around the city, is that, of course, people are very afraid here. Of course, many people are opting to stay indoors just like the president has asked them to do, saying, you know, if you don't necessarily have to go anywhere then don't do it. But there are actually more signs of life than many people would have thought. A lot of supermarkets, of course, are closed. However, there are some other markets that are actually open. There's actually more people on the streets that, than many people would have thought.

So it does seem as though, while many people here are still very afraid, asking whether or not this is actually over, whether or not some of these attackers might actually still be at large, they are also already sending the message that Paris will not be intimidated by this, at least not in the medium-term. John.

SESAY: Fred, it's Isha here. And at this stage, what do we know of the investigation into all of this -- how it's being coordinated, who's leading it?

PLEITGEN: Well there's a prosecutor leading it, and that prosecutor's already come out and given some information about all this. The information, for instance, that it was eight attackers who have been killed in these police operations and that seven of those attackers were wearing suicide vests. That's, for instance, something that we've gotten from that prosecutor who's now opened the case into all of this, and also the fact that it was six locations that were struck.

Of course, most of those locations here in the center of Paris in the 10th and 11th wards and districts of Paris and another one, or the other two attacks at Saint-Denis, at the stadium there at the Stade de France. So that's the information that we've been getting from the prosecutor's office. Of course the investigation is still in the early stages. And, again, one of the things that the investigators don't know yet is whether or not they have all the information, whether or not all the suspects in this case have actually been killed by the police or whether or not some might still be at large. Those are answers that the authorities here have yet to give. Now we are expecting the prosecutor's office to hold a press conference here at some point today to give more information as to who might be behind all this, where the investigation stands at this point and how they want to move forward to try and make sure that they actually get everybody who was behind the attacks that, of course, have rocked this nation and have frightened so many here in Paris.

VAUSE: And, Fred, the French president, Francois Holland, was meant to leave today for a trip to Turkey, I think for the G20. He's obviously staying behind for that. He seemed visibly shaken after all this, when he went on national television.

PLEITGEN: Yeah. Well, I think you're absolutely right. He certainly was absolutely shaken. I mean, one of the things that we also have to keep in mind is that he was on-hand as at least parts of these attacks took place. He was inside the Stade de France. He had to be evacuated from the Stade de France. The -- he saw some of the things, of course, that happened there in the Stade de France and then was confronted with this situation. I think especially the situation inside the theater that is, of course, behind me right now, the Bataclan theater, the fact that so many people were killed there, that you had that hostage situation, that you had that siege going on.

That certainly was something that very visibly shook him, and you could feel that in the remarks that he made later last evening where, on the one hand, of course, he said that this nation was in mourning, that this nation was shaken. But then he also vowed that there would be a very tough, and as he put it, a very merciless response to what has happened here, once they get behind who is, who's responsible for all of this, John.

VAUSE: Okay, Fred, thank you. Fred Pleitgen there giving us the --

SESAY: Appreciate that.

VAUSE: -- very latest from Paris. Thanks, Fred.

SESAY: Thank you, Fred. Well, French president Francois Hollande calls the attacks in Paris unprecedented, but they're not the only acts of terrorism, sadly, to strike France this year. Sixteen people were killed when Islamic extremists attacked the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store over the span of three days in January. A police officer was also killed during a traffic stop.

VAUSE: Less than a month later an attacker stabbed two soldiers on the streets of Nice. French intelligence had been aware of the attacker and were alerted when he had flown to Turkey just days before and was turned back.

SESAY: In April a student called an ambulance after he had injured himself only to have French authorities come and discover weapons, ammunition and evidence of plans to target churches under the direction of someone in Syria.

VAUSE: Two months after that a delivery employee who'd been on a terror watch list drove a van into factory, setting off a blast. A severed head was found hanging from a fence.

SESAY: Then in August, two members of the U.S. military and a French national overpowered a gunman aboard a high-speed train. He had reportedly met twice with French ISIS fighters in Turkey months before.

Well, let's take a closer look now at the wave of terror that broke out in Paris in the past 24 hours. It is still unclear this hour who was behind the attacks. Steve Moore joins us again. He is a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent. Steve, thank you so much for sticking around --

MOORE: Sure.

SESAY: -- and just helping us sort through all of this. I want to get to this issue of the sites, the targets.

MOORE: Right. Right.

SESAY: Talk to me about how you read this and the significance attacked to each.

MOORE: The -- terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda are very risk- adverse. By risk, meaning their attack isn't successful. They don't care if they die or not. They want to make sure that it's a successful attack. So they're not -- they would love to hit the Eiffel Tower. They would love to hit places like that but they're not going to go into the face of strong security.

So they are balancing the significance of the target with the chance of success at a high body count. And so that's what you're going to see.

VAUSE: Okay, with that in mind, so we had the attack at the Bataclan concert hall, 1,500 people inside and 112 dead. Also had this attack at the football stadium --

SESAY: Yeah.

VAUSE: -- 80,000 people inside and 4 dead. What's the difference here?

MOORE: The difference is once you get into a closed place, a smaller closed place where you have 1,500 people in there and they can't get out very quickly, and you start murdering them -- in school shootings we know that one person dies a minute. When you have four shooters in there with AK-47s you can multiple that by several times.

VAUSE: But also, at the football stadium we had the president.

SESAY: Yeah.

VAUSE: So could there have been increased security there? Would they have been bag checked? Would there have been metal detectors at a football stadium? We don't know. I'm not familiar.

MOORE: They might now have known that the president was there.

VAUSE: Sure. But there were standard security measures --

MOORE: Yes.

VAUSE: -- at that football stadium and there was pretty much nothing at the concert hall. Yeah?

MOORE: Right. Right, which means you can get four AK-47s in --

VAUSE: Yeah.

SESAY: Mm-hmm.

MOORE: -- as opposed to somebody who's going to have to work to sneak this in.

SESAY: One bigger problem, the AK-47s and the weaponry used in this -- it's not easy to get your hands on that kind of weaponry in Europe.

MOORE: In Europe it's extremely difficult to get. I mean, in Afghanistan you can buy them from anybody. But to get them into Europe is going to take a support network. And so that is where they're going to start looking. Who supported this? They're going to find cars, possibly, in the vicinity of the attacks that aren't picked up by anybody. And they're going to start finding the trail of these people.

VAUSE: In terms of forensics here, because we're already told that seven out of the eight died as suicide bombers, I remember, in my time in the Mid-East, the suicide vests that I looked at, they were detonated with two wires. And this was a very sort of Palestinian suicide vest.

MOORE: Right.

VAUSE: So, you know, they'd run it and they'd yell, "Allahu Akbar" and then they would cross the wires and the vest would explode.

MOORE: Those --

VAUSE: Not every vest is the same though.

MOORE: No, those are very, very crude vests and you might see them in the Palestinian --

VAUSE: Right.

MOORE: -- cause years ago. Now they've gotten to the point where they have dead man's switches where the switch is held down and the minute you let it go, then it goes off.

VAUSE: It detonates.

SESAY: Mm-hmm.

MOORE: So shooting them does nothing except detonate the bomb.

VAUSE: And so, with that in mind, though, will the way the vest is made --

MOORE: Yes.

VAUSE: -- tell you who --

SESAY: A signature.

VAUSE: -- is behind this?

MOORE: Absolutely. When we were over -- when I was in Pakistan we would X-ray the bodies of victims to try and get parts of the bombs from them so that we could determine how sophisticated the weaponry was. And the other thing is, the numbers aren't adding up with the number -- they said that four people were shooting in the theater. Well, if four people were there, that leaves four for five other sites.

SESAY: Mm-hmm.

MOORE: They also said that seven were wearing suicide vests. Well, the four in the Bataclan were not wearing suicide vests. So that -- so there are -- the numbers aren't adding up.

VAUSE: (Inaudible), I guess. Yeah.

SESAY: So let me ask you this. Clearly, the FBI has a great amount of experience in this kind of thing. The FBI and CIA, American intelligence. Help me understand what assistance America will be giving at a time like this, certainly on the intelligence level, helping the French sort through this?

MOORE: This is going to be a huge matrix. I mean, the French, really, are as good as anybody else in the intelligence business. What's -- so it's really not going to be we're going to come in and help them. We might have a key piece of a jigsaw puzzle that they don't have. So what you're going to go in and do is sit down and put a lot of minds around a table, saying what do you know about this? What do you know about this, getting flow charts going and see if you have any connectivity between what you're investigating and what they're investigating.

VAUSE: We are out of time, Steve, but when we talk next time we'll talk you about just how good French intelligence is.

SESAY: Yeah.

VAUSE: Because, clearly, there were some problems.

SESAY: Yes.

VAUSE: Everyone keeps telling me these guys are good, they know what they're doing. MOORE: Nobody's -- nobody is infallible.

VAUSE: Okay.

SESAY: No, and we'll talk about the weak spots that exist.

VAUSE: When we come back.

MOORE: Okay.

SESAY: Steve, appreciate it. Thank you.

VAUSE: A short break here. When we come, at least 153 people dead, many more wounded in the worst attack to hit France since World War II. We'll have reaction from a witness in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL)

SESAY: Hello, everyone. A bloodbath. That's how one concert goer described the scene in Paris when gunmen stormed an auditorium during a show. Coordinated attacks with bombs and firearms in six locations across the French capital have left people right around the world shocked.

VAUSE: At least 153 people are dead, many more are wounded. It is the worst attack in France since World War II. The French president declared a state of emergency and heightened security at the borders. The Paris prosecutor says eight attackers are dead, seven of them in suicide blasts. Paris journalist, Julien Pearce, was inside the Bataclan concert hall during the attack.

SESAY: Yeah, he spoke to Anderson Cooper a little bit earlier about what he saw.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JULIEN PEARCE, PARIS JOURNALIST: The show was about to end. The band, Eagle of Death Metal, was playing for almost an hour. And suddenly we heard gunshots coming behind us. And when I -- I looked back I saw at least two man, unmasked men. Maybe there were three, but in the confusion I can't tell you exactly. But they were holding assault rifles, AK-47s. I'm sure about it, that I seen it. And they were firing randomly through the crowd.

And so, obviously, we all lied down on the floor to not get hurt. And it was a huge panic, and the terrorists -- sorry -- shot at us for like 10 to 15 minutes. It was like -- it was a bloodbath. And they shot at us and they reloaded again several times, multiple times and it's actually what -- I escaped because they reloaded, basically. I just waited for the time they reloaded to run, to climb the scene and to hit behind it. And I tried to help few people around me, and it was -- it was shocking.

I mean, it was panicking, huge panic. And so they shot at us for 15 -- 10 to 15 minutes. It was long. It was very, very long. And the Bataclan is not a huge such room. It's about 1,000 people can gather in it. And, but it was overcrowded. I mean, there were no empty room. It was sold out, basically. So it was easy for them.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: So two to three men. And CNN has now confirmed that two gunmen were killed -- and, again, this is the earliest report. But we are being told that two gunmen were killed inside the theater. You're saying you saw two, possibly three gunmen with AK-47 style long rifles shooting into the crowd. And this went on for 10 to 15 minutes? Was -- were they standing and shooting? Were they moving around?

PEARCE: They were not moving, actually. They were just standing at the back of the scene, at the back of the crowd and they were just shooting on the floor because everybody was on the floor. And I seen one of the guys, very young, actually. He was like 18 years old, 19 years old, maximum 20 -- maximum. And he was executing people on the floor. And the person around him, he was holding his assault rifle toward, to down. He was shooting people.

So they were not moving, actually. They were just standing at the back of the concert room and shooting at us, like if we were birds.

COOPER: Were they saying anything?

PEARCE: I haven't heard anything about them. I haven't heard, "Allahu Akbar" or something like this. I have some friends who escaped who heard them talking about Iraq and Syria but not I'm quite sure about it. But I haven't heard anything but the screaming of the people.

COOPER: The gunmen, do you remember what they were wearing? Is it -- did they have heavy clothing? Would -- I mean, there had been some concern --

PEARCE: No.

COOPER: -- possible suicide vests or anything like that. Did you see anything --

PEARCE: Not from what I seen.

COOPER: -- that would indicate --

PEARCE: They were wearing like a jogging but black -- black stuff. I mean, they were all wearing black but not tactical vests, no -- nothing like this. There were just holding AK-47s, that's all. I haven't seen grenades. I haven't seen bombs or whatever. But it happened so fast. I mean, we were just trying to hide and save our lives. So I looked at one guy for a few times. I mean, the one I described to you, very young. And he wasn't wearing tactical stuff. He was just a random guy, I mean I could have met him few minutes before and never thought he was a terrorist.

COOPER: Yeah, I know you said your friends said they heard some people speaking. Do you know what language they were speaking? Were they speaking French?

PEARCE: I believe so. I believe so because the friends I spoke to said to me they were talking between them. So I believe they were speaking French. I don't know if they are French, but they were speaking French.

COOPER: Julien, when you -- Julien, when you went to the concert was there metal detectors or anything when you walked in? Were you searched by security?

PEARCE: Nothing. Nothing. We haven't been searched, body searched, nothing. I mean, I just showed my ticket, they slashed it, and that's it. I mean, they didn't look to my bag and they didn't look at nothing. The security was very poor, honestly.

COOPER: And so basically, I mean, the scene you're describing is one where, basically, everybody was laying down on the floor and in the course of 10 or 15 minutes these people were just going around shooting people, executing them point blank.

PEARCE: Yeah, everything -- that's what happened. And hopefully I was in the front of the -- I was at the front of the scene, so I was some kind of protected by the bullet. But everybody was panicking. Everybody was trying to escape, so everybody was walking on bodies, try to -- to climb on the scene to get protection. And so I said to the people around me just to cower down and to hide, play dead basically.

And we waited -- we waited for the time they reloaded the gun to just climb the scene and to hide out there, you know, in a small room on the right of the scene. But unfortunately there were no escape that room. It was just a closed room. So we were trapped. So we waited for five minutes. They stopped shooting and they reloaded again and we run on the scene to find an exit. And it's when I found an exit that I saw the body of a young girl who was shot twice in the leg. She was bleeding very badly and I -- and I grabbed her and I put her on my back and we run.

We run together for, in the streets for 200 or 300 meters. And I found a cab and I stopped the cab, and I said to the taxi driver, well, go to the hospital here. But she was bleeding so badly I don't know if she make it. I don't know if she's still alive.

SESAY: Hmm.

VAUSE: A very gripping account of exactly what happened inside that theater by Julien Pearce speaking with Anderson Cooper a few hours ago. And the detail that he went into of exactly what happened insider there is astounding.

SESAY: It really is. And this is the thing, these injuries and the point you have made as well, from this kind of weaponry, these AK-47s, it's --

VAUSE: Oh, this is brutal.

SESAY: It's brutal. It's so severe. We know of 153 people who have lost their lives, but the numbers of the injured and --

VAUSE: And the word, wounded, makes it sound like --

SESAY: Absolutely.

VAUSE: -- it's less severe. But these will be horrific injuries.

SESAY: Yeah, and life threatening. So we continue to watch the situation in terms of the casualty numbers as well.

VAUSE: And we will take a short break. When we come back then we'll look at the tributes from around the world as many show their support for the people of France.

(COMMERCIAL)

VAUSE: Well, it is coming up to 11 o'clock on a Friday night here on the West Coast and in France dawn is breaking with the city of Paris and the entire nation grappling with the unprecedented scale of the attacks which rocked the French capital on Friday night.

The country's under a state of emergency. Attackers targeted six locations across Paris as well as a nearby suburb, killing at least 153 people, wounding dozens.

SESAY: The worst attack was at the Bataclan concert hall where at least 112 people were killed after gunmen opened fire. The city's prosecutor says eight suspected attackers are dead, but it is unclear if more may have been involved.

Well, as the full horror of the past 24 hours comes into view, there is a visible display of support for Paris right around the world. As the Eiffel Tower goes dark, other landmarks around the world are being lit up to show solidarity with the French capital.

VAUSE: The Empire State Building in New York, Wembley Stadium in London and Rio de Janeiro's Statue of Christ the Redeemer all lit up in France's national colors of red, white and blue. A visible show of their support for the victims as well as the city of Paris. And with that, thank you for joining us. I'm John Vause.

SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay. We'll continue with more live coverage of the terror attacks in Paris after the break.

(COMMERCIAL)