PARIS— French police are hunting possible accomplices of eight assailants who terrorized Paris concert-goers, cafe diners and soccer fans in this country’s deadliest peacetime attacks, a succession of explosions and shootings that cast a dark shadow over this luminous tourist destination.

Parisians who went to sleep in horror at initial news of the attacks woke Saturday to learn that at least 120 people were killed and scores wounded. World leaders joined together in sympathy and indignation, New York police increased security measures, and people around the world reached out to friends and loved ones in France.

The perpetrators remained a mystery — their nationalities, their motives, even their exact number. Suspicion turned to Islamic extremists, who are angry at France’s military operations against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida affiliates, and who targeted satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo this year and have hit Jewish and other sites in France in the past.

Among the worst of the attacks was at a concert hall where members of a band founded in Palm Desert, Eagles of Death Metal, were performing. Scores of people were held hostage and attackers ended the standoff by detonating explosive belts.

Police who stormed the building, killing at least three attackers, encountered a bloody scene of horror inside. Members of the band, according to social media reports and family members, appeared to be safe, though the status of their crew members was uncertain.

The violence that spread fear through the French capital hit home for Riverside County sheriff’s Lt. Leonard Purvis and his family. Purvis’ wife, Liz, is a cousin of guitarist Eden Galindo, who relayed to the family Friday afternoon that all band members are safe.

“From what we understand, they were playing and heard shots being fired and they rushed off stage,” Purvis said.

The band was founded by Palm Desert residents and childhood friends Josh Homme and Jesse Hughes. Galindo is a Los Angeles resident, Purvis said. Homme was not on tour with the band, reports said.

Seventy people who were known to be in France had not been accounted for, said a U.S. official who was briefed by the Justice Department. No Americans had been reported killed in the attacks.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said as many as eight attackers were killed, seven of them in suicide bombings.

Prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre told The Associated Press that the eighth attacker was killed by security forces when they raided a concert hall where the assailants had taken hostages.

She said it’s possible that there are terrorists still at large.

Authorities said the death toll could exceed 120 for at least six sites, including the national stadium and a tight circle of popular nightspots.

Hollande declared a state of emergency and announced that he was closing the country’s borders. Metro lines shut down and streets emptied on the mild fall evening as fear spread through the city, still aching from the horrors of the Charlie Hebdo attack just 10 months ago.

The Friday attacks unfolded with two suicide bombings and an explosion outside the national stadium during a soccer match between the French and German national teams. Within minutes, according to Paris Police Chief Michel Cadot, another group of attackers sprayed cafes outside the concert hall with machine gunfire, then stormed inside and opened fire on the panicked audience. As police closed in, the attackers detonated explosive belts, killing themselves.

Hollande, who had to be evacuated from the stadium when the bombs went off outside, later vowed that the nation would stand firm and united: “A determined France, a united France, a France that joins together and a France that will not allow itself to be staggered even if today, there is infinite emotion faced with this disaster, this tragedy, which is an abomination, because it is barbarism.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, although jihadists on Twitter immediately praised them and criticized France’s military operations against Islamic State extremists.

In addition to the deaths at the concert hall, dozens were killed in an attack on a restaurant in the 10th arrondissement and several other establishments crowded on a Friday night, police said. Authorities said at least three people died when the bombs went off outside the soccer stadium.

All of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named in the quickly moving investigation.

“This is a terrible ordeal that again assails us,” Hollande said in a nationally televised address. “We know where it comes from, who these criminals are, who these terrorists are.”

U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking to reporters in Washington, decried an “attack on all humanity,” calling the Paris violence an “outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians” and vowing to do whatever it takes to help bring the perpetrators to justice.

Two explosions were heard outside the Stade de France stadium north of Paris during a France-Germany exhibition soccer game. A police union official, Gregory Goupil of the Alliance Police Nationale, whose region includes the area of the stadium, said there were two suicide attacks and a bombing that killed at least three people near two entrances and a McDonalds.

The blasts penetrated the sounds of cheering fans, according to an Associated Press reporter in the stadium. Sirens were immediately heard, and a helicopter was circling overhead.

France has heightened security measures ahead of a major global climate conference that starts in two weeks, out of fear of violent protests and potential terrorist attacks. Hollande canceled a planned trip to this weekend’s G-20 summit in Turkey, which was to focus in large part on growing fears of terrorism carried out by Islamic extremists.

Emilio Macchio, from Ravenna, Italy, was at Le Carillon restaurant, one of the restaurants targeted, having a beer on the sidewalk, when the shooting started. He said he didn’t see any gunmen or victims, but hid behind a corner, then ran away.

“It sounded like fireworks,” he said.

France has been on edge since January, when Islamic extremists attacked the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which had run cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and a kosher grocery. Twenty people died, including the three attackers. The Charlie Hebdo attackers claimed links to extremists in Yemen, while the kosher market attacker claimed ties to the Islamic State group.

This time, attackers targeted young people enjoying a rock concert and ordinary city residents enjoying a Friday night out.

One of the targeted restaurants, Le Carillon, is in the same general neighborhood as the Charlie Hebdo offices, as is the Bataclan, among the best-known concert venues in eastern Paris, near the trendy Oberkampf area known for a vibrant nightlife. The Coachella Valley-based band Eagles of Death Metal was scheduled to play there Friday night.

Among the first physicians to respond to the wounded Friday was Patrick Pelloux, an emergency room doctor and former Charlie Hebdo writer who was among the first to enter the offices Jan. 7 to find his friends and colleagues dead.

The country has seen several smaller-scale attacks or attempts since, including an incident on a high-speed train in August in which American travelers thwarted an attempted attack by a heavily armed man.

France’s military is bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq and fighting extremists in Africa, and extremist groups have frequently threatened France in the past.

French authorities are particularly concerned about the threat from hundreds of French Islamic radicals who have travelled to Syria and returned home with skills to stage violence.

Though it was unclear who was responsible for Friday night’s violence, the Islamic State is “clearly the name at the top of everyone’s list,” said Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert and senior adviser to the president of the Washington-based RAND Corporation.

Jenkins said the tactic used — “multiple attackers in coordinated attacks at multiple locations” — echoed recommendations published in the extremist group’s online magazine, Dabbiq, over the summer.

“The big question on everyone’s mind is, were these attackers, if they turn out to be connected to one of the groups in Syria, were they homegrown terrorists or were they returning fighters from having served” with the Islamic State group, Jenkins said. “That will be a huge question.”

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