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Abstract
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A terrorist attack is a sudden, unpredictable and unplanned action aimed to disrupt the infrastructure of the place where it occurs and causing large numbers of victims. Thus, the role of the public authorities is to rescue the victims as quickly as possible after securing the area and re-establishing the access routes. These operations are codified in action plans which are applied to the extent of structures and personnel not affected by the events and available to deal with the consequences of the concomitant or successive events.
Once rescue operations are finalised, the forensic investigation will start with two mains goals: identifying terrorists and victims.
A series of coordinated attacks occurred on 13 November in Paris, and the city's northern suburb, Saint-Denis where three suicide bombers struck outside the "Stade de France" during a football match. This was followed by mass shootings and a suicide bombing in five terraces of cafés and restaurants. In the meantime, three suicide bombers did a mass shooting in the Bataclan theatre and took hostages. These coordinated attacks resulted in 130 dead victims including 89 from the Bataclan.
The first responders and forensic teams were confronted with a variety of challenges which occurred as a result of the variability of the modus operandi of these events (shootings, hostage-taking, suicide-bombings), the condition of victim's bodies (which ranged from complete to highly disrupted), the location of single and multiple scenes, both indoor and outdoor, and the fact that both national and international persons were affected.
It seemed interesting to us to present this subject from the angle of the lessons learned during the Paris attacks in November 2015, which proved to be decisive during the medicolegal operations after the Nice attack in July 2016...
Language: en |