10 years after Bataclan massacre, Paris is still scarred by Islamic State attacks

PARIS (AP) — Sophie Dias fought tears outside the Stade de France on Thursday as she described her “void that never closes” since her father became the first person killed in France’s deadliest peacetime attack — a night of terrorism a decade ago that still scars Paris and shapes the country.

The coordinated assaults on Nov. 13, 2015 turned the French capital into a theater of blood and calamity: gunfire on café terraces, explosions at a stadium, a massacre at the Bataclan concert hall. Many in France and abroad have described the attacks as the country’s 9/11.

WATCH: Bataclan attack survivors and victims’ loved ones on resulting hate, compassion

The attacks killed 132 people, including two survivors who later died by suicide, and hundreds more were wounded. The night hardened France’s security reflexes while deepening a sense of solidarity that has endured a decade later — with many families now measuring time as “before” and “after.”

Dias’ father, Manuel, died when the first bomber detonated outside the Stade de France. Speaking at the stadium gate where he was killed, she said the absence he left “weighs every morning and every evening, for 10 years.”

“We are told to turn the page,” she said. “But the absence is immense, the shock is intact and the incomprehension remains. I’d like to know why, I’d like to understand. I’d like these attacks to stop.”

President Emmanuel Macron and first lady Brigitte Macron stood beside her for a wreath-laying and a minute of silent remembrance during the first in a day of tributes at the places where Islamic State group gunmen and suicide bombers hit a soccer match, neighborhood cafés and a rock concert in the space of minutes. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo also was present.

“Ten years. The pain remains,” Macron wrote earlier on X, saying France remembers “the lives cut short, the wounded, the families and the loved ones.”

Tributes trace the path of carnage

From Saint-Denis, Macron is traveling to each attack site in sequence: the Carillon and Petit Cambodge cafés in the 10th arrondissement, then La Bonne Bière, Le Comptoir Voltaire and La Belle Équipe in the 11th, and finally the Bataclan, where 90 people were killed during a three-hour siege. Families of the victims are being placed closest to plaques at each location in what the presidency calls a “families first” protocol.

At the café terraces, the names of the 39 people killed there were read aloud.

Outside the Bataclan, the boulevard fell silent as an afternoon ceremony began. Families and survivors gathered alongside current and former officials — including ex-President François Hollande and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls — while religious leaders and representatives of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, whose premises were also attacked just months before, joined them in tribute.

At Place de la République, Parisians gathered with candles, flowers and handwritten notes at the base of Marianne, the national symbol, as they did in 2015. Big screens broadcast the ceremonies.

“Ten years later, the emotion is still intact” and hope must be shared “despite the pain and the absence,” Hidalgo said at the event.

A new memorial garden and a city still carrying the night

The commemorations were set to culminate with the inauguration of the “November 13 Memory Garden” opposite City Hall.

Conceived with victims’ associations, it is a stone enclosure from which granite blocks rise to evoke the attack sites, engraved with the victims’ names. The evening ceremony, attended by Macron, will be built around music in tribute to the spirit of festivity the attackers tried to destroy.

The Eiffel Tower is to be lit again in the colors of the French flag after nightfall, as it was Wednesday night. Church bells across the capital, including those of Notre-Dame Cathedral, are due to ring in the early evening in memory of what the city’s archbishop called “a long night of anguish.”

The attacks reshaped France’s political and emotional landscape, triggering sweeping counterterrorism powers and years of debate over security and liberties. Hidalgo said she can no longer pass the attack sites “without seeing them through the filter of that terrible night.”

Valls told French broadcaster TF1 he remembers “every minute, as if my memory refuses to forget.”

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez warned Thursday that the terrorist threat remains “very high,” even if a large, coordinated operation like that of 2015 is considered less likely than a decade ago.

Officials now fear more the actions of individuals who radicalize on French soil.

Survivors try to move on

On that Friday night in 2015, nine Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers struck within minutes of one another. Suicide bombers detonated outside the Stade de France; gunmen sprayed bullets across café terraces; and three attackers stormed the Bataclan at 9:47 p.m., killing 90 people before police ended the siege. Two survivors who later died by suicide have since been recognized among the victims, bringing the toll to 132.

For survivors, the anniversary reopens wounds.

“The 10th anniversary is here and emotions and tension are everywhere for us survivors,” said Arthur Dénouveaux, who escaped the Bataclan and leads the Life for Paris association. “You never fully heal. You just learn to live differently.”

Many describe a second task after grief: rebuilding the ordinary — work, friendship, noise — without flinching.

A 2021–2022 trial ended with life imprisonment without parole for Salah Abdeslam, the lone surviving assailant, and convictions for 19 others. For many, accountability did not erase the strain of trauma or the daily work of recovery; it clarified what must be protected.

As names are read and wreaths laid, the message from officials and families is consistent: remember the victims, honor the responders, and preserve the everyday pleasures the attackers meant to destroy — football, music, a table with friends.

The goal, planners say, is simple: grief without spectacle, memory with room for the living.

Nicolas Garriga and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.