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THE BELLS OF Notre Dame rang out today to honour the 130 people killed in jihadist attacks in Paris ten years ago, in France’s worst-ever peacetime attacks.
On 13 November 2015, assailants from the Islamic State group killed around 90 people at the Bataclan concert hall, where the US band Eagles of Death Metal were playing.
They killed dozens more at Parisian restaurants and cafes, and one person near the Stade de France football stadium, where spectators were watching France play Germany.
At a ceremony in central Paris, first responders slowly read out the names of those killed that night and of two survivors who later died by suicide.
“Each of your pains is senseless, unjust, unbearable,” President Emmanuel Macron said, addressing relatives and survivors of the assaults, which also wounded hundreds.
He praised police and medics who responded, but also “the woman who opened her door to 20 injured people”, and “the man who ran down into the street with his first aid kit after hearing gunshots”.
Macron pledged France would do everything to avoid any similar attack.
“For those who take up arms against France, the response will be uncompromising,” he said.
Earlier during the commemorations, Jesse Hughes, of Eagles of Death Metal, sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with a choir composed of survivors and people who had lost loved ones.
Today’s ceremonies began at the Stade de France just outside Paris, where the family of the first person killed in the attacks, Manuel Dias, paid homage to the victims.
“We will never forget. They tell us to move on 10 years later, but the absence is immense,” said his daughter, Sophie Dias.
Macron and other officials paid their respects at each site of the attacks.
Residents of the French capital honoured the anniversary with candles, flowers and notes at a temporary memorial at the Place de la Republique.
Adrain Aggrey said he had laid flowers for the families of the victims “to show them we haven’t forgotten”.
The sole surviving member of the group that staged the attacks, 36-year-old Salah Abdeslam, is serving life in jail. The other nine attackers blew themselves up or were killed by police.
“France over these years has been able to stand united and overcome it all,” former president Francois Hollande told AFP before the anniversary.
The then-president was at the Stade de France when the attacks began, and was whisked out of the crowd before re-appearing on television late at night, describing what had happened as a “horror”.
Hollande testified in the 148-day trial that led to Abdeslam being jailed for life in 2022.
He said he remembered telling the defendants, including others accused of plotting or offering logistical support, that they had been given defence lawyers despite having committed “the unforgivable”.
“We are a democracy, and democracy always wins in the end,” he said he told them.
US-backed forces in 2019 in eastern Syria defeated the last remnants of the IS proto-state that inspired the Paris attacks.
Abdeslam remains behind bars and is open to the idea of speaking to victims of the attacks if they want to take part in a “restorative justice” initiative, according to his lawyer Olivia Ronen.
In Paris, survivors and the relatives of those killed have attempted to rebuild their lives, but some have approached the tributes with apprehension.
Stephane Sarrade’s 23-year-old son Hugo was killed at the Bataclan, a place he has avoided since.
“I am incapable of going there,” he told AFP, adding he would stay away from today’s ceremonies.
A museum is to open in 2029 to house around 500 objects linked to the attacks or the victims, most contributed by the bereaved families to curators.
The Terrorism Memorial Museum’s collection includes a concert ticket donated by a mother who lost her only daughter at the Bataclan, and the unfinished guitar of a luthier who was also killed at the concert.
It also contains a blackboard menu of La Belle Equipe riddled with bullet holes, still bearing the words “Happy Hour”.
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