A terrorist attack. Maintenan, on est tous Paris.

A TERRORIST ATTACK. MAINTENANT, ON EST TOUS PARIS.

Last Friday, 13^th November France suffered one of the worst episodes of the 21st century. I didn’t write about this before, because the event was too recent and I wanted to see what was going to happen next, the reaction of France, how much this has affected us, and obviously how this was going to affect Spain, because I remind you that Granada is one of the most menaced cities by these fanatical terrorists, because they still think that the south Spain is Al-Andalus, as it was called when they invaded the Iberian peninsula in 711 AD, and they still think that is part of their “empire”.

First of all, I’m going to talk a bit about the incident. It began in the northern suburb, Saint-Denis, on the night of 13th November 2015. The attackers killed 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan theatre, where they took hostages. In total 368 people were injured. Afterwards, three suicide bombers struck near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, followed by suicide bombings and mass shootings at cafés, restaurants and a music venue in Paris. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying it was in retaliation for the French airstrikes on ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq. The President of France, François Hollande, said the attacks were planned in Syria, organised in Belgium, and perpetrated with French complicity.

In response, a state of emergency was declared, and temporary border checks were introduced. On 15^th November, France launched the biggest air raid, striking ISIL targets in Al-Raqqah. On 18^th November, the suspected lead operative of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed in a police raid in Saint-Denis, along with at least two other people.

 
France had been on high alert since the January 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 17 people, including civilians and police officers. The November attacks have been the deadliest on France since World War II, and the deadliest in the European Union since the Madrid train bombings in 2004. 

But, why hasn’t Europe reacted now to this problem and not before? That’s because things only affect us when they are near us. There have been many attacks in other countries like Tunisia, Kuwait…, but it’s now when Europe is doing something against these terrorists. People think that this could be the beginning of the 3rd World War with a new type of fighting in which there won’t be a war between two factions, instead of that, we will have attacks like this one in Paris, where we could see that the terrorist hadn’t fear to die and kill themselves with bombs. 

And regarding the response of France, I reckon that it’s not the best way to solve this problem, because I think that they are killing too many civil people that maybe couldn’t have escaped from these places, even if now there isn’t another solution, because they are recruiting more and more children so that they can train them to do this type of things, which is inhuman. 

I only hope that this war will finish as soon as possible, so that these episodes won’t happen again in France, in Tunisia and in any part of the world. Even if experts say that it will take several years. Nevertheless, I only want our governments to stay together against these terrorists and not be hypocrites just putting a French flag in their Facebook profiles, because I didn’t see anybody with other flags when the terrorists attacked other countries, and please don’t say hypocrites to the people that observe a minute of silence, because nobody has observed a minute of silence in other terrorist attacks.