and the first i heard that, actually, i was calling into a tv show to tell my experiences, and i heard on the line that bombs had gone off. and it was startling to hear that. >> freelance american journalist seth porges who ended up being a witness to this tonight in paris. seth, thank you for helping us understand what you saw. thank you. >> thank you. >> it is now 10:00 p.m. on the east coast in the united states. there's a six-hour time difference between the east coast of the united states and paris, which means that it is 4:00 a.m. in paris. let me update you on what we know at this hour. this is a series of apparently coordinated attacks that hit paris tonight within a very short time frame. they started at about 9:30. we know that all of them had started, if not ended by about 10:15. in total, the sequence of attacks tonight has an unconfirmed, estimated death toll of approximately 120 people.

we want to emphasize that number may rise or fall as we get more information. these were multiple attacks using bombs and guns. there are some reports that there may have also been grenades used. there have also been reports of multiple suicide bombs being used in this attack as well. it all started right around 9:30 p.m. local time in paris. this is a warm night in france. the french habit is to eat dinner later than we do here anyway, so 9:30 p.m. on friday night. the attack seemed to have started with. bos set off just outside the national stadium in paris. there were explosions outside

the stadium. we believe some of those explosions may have been suicide bombs. it's believed that shortly after those explosions, the chronology is a little hard to suss out because the chronology is tight. it seems to have happened in a pretty close sequence. we think now the stadium was first and then several minutes later, at about five miles away, there were gunmen armed with automatic ak-47 rifles who fired porn multiple restaurants and caves in a crowded part of downtown paris. now that tight time coordination happening for events that -- for attacks that happened not right next to each other, a few miles apart, that is part of why this is being seen not just as a coordinated attack but a fairly sophisticated coordinated attack and that may be key to figuring out who did this. the first attack at the stadium, second attack by gunmen on strauntds and caves in central paris, and then those attacks were followed by what is

believed to be the deadliest part of it that unfolded at a music venue in central paris, a theatre called the bataclan. close to 1,000 people were attending a soldout show by an american rock band that has the ironic name, eagles of death metal. it's being reported that venue, multiple attackers entered with guns. they killed some attendees at the music venue when they entered the fen ewe. they took many other spectators hostage. the ap is now reporting, sourcing paris police, and this is something that's just broken in the last year. paris police the attacks at that point blew themselves up with suicide belts. so the detail is that the

stadium and the music venue, that tactical aspect of the attack has not been directly confirmed by msnbc, but we believe by the reports, we're receiving these other reports that that is what happened. or at least that's what french police believed what happened. they believe that's what happened. they may also be strategically important in terms of how to thwart events like this in the mu chur. the so he shoulded press tonight is citing the head of the paris police, saying that all of the attackers are believed to be dead but they are still actively searching for accomplices who took part in a coordinated, quite sophisticated attack in paris.

>> i understand you were in touch with people tonight in that siege? >> yeah, it's striking. just been posted by some critics. it's the story of a 36 and 22-year-old and they were going to the concert because they wanted to have fun one friday evening in paris. they described what happened, and it's probably the first time we heard, we're hearing what's happening, what happened tonight in this bataclan, this musical in paris. they're saying it was in the middle of the concert, and the people arrived by the back entrance, and then they began to fire. they began to fire heavily and it was making a lot of noise. and this couple, like other young people went to the floor, lied down on the floor. then falling from the sky there was some apparently debris because all of the plets. the people didn't stop firing.

then they said something quite horrible. the woman was injured in the hand, and then she saw one of the other girls that had a hats on his head. he was looking at a couple who was completely petrified by fear. and then he looked at this couple and apparently he told this couple to escape. and then there was another woman who looked at the attacker and according to the testimony, this woman took an object and throw the object to the attacker. she apparently wanted to defend herself and then he looked at her and he kill her right away. then after, there were a lot of confusion. there were apparently a big explosion which another witness was telling us earlier in the evening that one of blew himself up inside the theatre. and then this couple was able again to lie down on the floor and to escape with a group of 15

peopl people. this is absolutely striking because it never happened in france before. in the restaurant, there was a shooting earlier in the restaurant before the hostage situation. and apparently there were between 12 to 15 people who are killed in the shooting in the restaurant. >> 12 to 15 people killed at the shooting in restaurant? >> yes, absolutely. at least 12 people. the restaurant name was la belle chip. people were having dinner at the terrace. there were between 12 to 15 people killed in restaurant. >> let me just confirm one other detail in terms of what you just described from the witness reports, it sounds like from what you described that there was some effort by people inside the theatre to fight back.

>> yes, that's quite amazing. ordinary people trying to fight for their lives. the united states, you remember what happened during 9/1 1 when some people did something, and apparently tonight, according to this report i'm reading from the testimony of this guy was there. he said i saw with my eyes a woman was looking at the guy who wanted to kill her and before she died, she took an object and then he kill her. but until the last, she tried to defend her life. >> very helpful and moving, actually, to hear that witness report. i appreciate it.

i should mention -- i think that we -- let me ask the control room. just to give you after sense of what this theatre looks like when it's used as a live music venue. we think the capacity is over 1,000. maximum capacity is maybe 1,500 people. we're told it's a soldout theatre tonight by this american band. this is not tonight. this has nothing to do with tonight's events in paris, but this is what a soldout show looks like inside the bataclan theatre. if you're trying to get a sense of what kind of target this was, and what kind of a field of carnage this was, that's what it looks like when people are there to see music.

and we do not have a confirmed death toll from this venue tonight. the unofficial and uncon fifrmed death toll is that we expect the body count from that venue to be in excess of 100 people with over 120 people dilled in these attacks in the various forms that took place across paris. joining us now on set is brian williams who's been helming this coverage for so much of the day today. >> as you've been able to step away from it for a few minutes, do you feel like you have a top-line understanding of how important this is and what's happened here? >> i spoke to a friend of mine 'he said -- he's a lover of history. he said maybe this is our world war. those of us who are kids, not anymore, but children of the world war ii generation, the world doesn't feel safe now. that was his thought.

maybe this is the way it's going to be. >> it's not against great powers. >> yeah, the free world z against a common enemy. it certainly feels less safe tonight. >> you made this point well earlier this evening as we were first getting reports of the real scale of this. you pointed out no terrorist attack is like any other terrorist attack. that said, if you're talking scale, the thing this brings to mind is something like mumbai. it is something like the westgate shopping center, nairobi attack. not just because of the large death poll, but because it was multiple attackers, coordinate aid tack. it went on for a while and we did not know when it was going to end and that was part of the terror. looking back at those kinds of

attacks, did stha change us? did they change just those countries in which they happened? did they change our feelings about whether or not this was a worldwide war? >> great question. we get a little more haggard with each one. this is really interesting. cambodian restaurant in paris. a global soccer match in paris, an american concert venue at which you would expect a high probability of american music fans, visiting students, ex-pats. this is really interesting, striking with immunity at will. as i've been saying all night, some pretty common armaments, and some pretty common methods, armed with that we don't mind dying for the cause. which makes a hostage situation very tough. very tough to crack down on when

there's no will to live on the part of your hostage takers. >> richard engel made a good point. there's something about this type of attack which not only involves advanced planning and coordination. it involves a certain type of person. you can't just bring your average disgruntled, angry or upset person in a plot like this and expect them to a perform in a way these terrorists did. we just got a new eyewitness account from the bataclan. >> the show is about 30 minutes in when we heard shots and saw two persons with machine guns firing into the crowd. we all dived to the ground, panic, screaming. the firing continued. on the right, a door opened and we all rushed into it. we were stuck in the stairwell for about five or ten minutes. someone managed to open an access to a roof. we waited for a bit and a man whose apartment had access to the roof, he opened the window and let us in.

we waited there for it to be over. we heard explosions, gunfires, scream. i only saw two, i believe it's two attackers. dresed like civilians. i didn't simasings. i saw people on the floor and terrorists fire into people as they were on the floor. new eyewitness report in terms of what happened there. these may not be combat veteran attackers who carried this out, but these are people who have clearly had military-style training about how to per mist in the pace of mass panic that they're causing. and how to keep it going once they've started to cause this kind of mayhem. that takes work, it takes training and coordination. >> you and i tend to do our on-air talking after a terrible tragedy, and more often than not, a terrible gun-related tragedy. and this does show coordination, it just prove all over again, it's very difficult, if not impossible to stop a motivated attacker.

or in this case, a coordinated small band of motivated attackers. we've learned that all over again tonight. and that's why our world feels a little less safe. >> i want to take a look right now at some of the front pages from some french papers again right now. it's after 4:00 a.m. paris time. my high school french won't help me here. on the left, aujourd'hui. the headline is massacre in the heart of paris. the second one, karj in paris. and the headline on le figaro, war in the heart of paris. those will be french newspapers, front pages tomorrow. i want to bring now into the discussion a reporter for bloomberg news who's in paris.

>> over the course of this evening, the one of the things that has felt as a terrible loose end is the question of whether or not this is over. police say they believe all ate tackers are dead, but they are still looking for accomplices in the very early morning hours now of saturday morning in paris. does it feel like a major police operation is still under way? >> there was a dropping of intensity at some point. i was near the bataclan for several hours after the assault. couldn't get very close to it, but at the very beginning it was extremely tense. police were very jumpy. i had never seen that many police. there were ambulances going in and out of the zone. sirens screeching. there really was -- it was extraordinary dra mat ecks. you hadner seen anything like it in paris.

even during the charlie hebdo attacks. then 2:00 in the morn, i just got home. the police do seem to be a lit less on edge. they began to let us into some of the -- they opened up some streets towards the end. i do get the impression that they think all the attackers died in the attacks. >> i know you were near the bataclan theatre and you were held back from any proximity by the police line there. in terms of response, obviously there's just incredible drama and anxiety around the prospect of people in an ongoing way being held and hurt and killed by attackers. who still have them. there were unconfirmed reports of people tweeting from inside that steej saying come rescue us. did it appear that police and

security services on the scene had a plan, were able to constantly clear the perimeter, knew what they were doing, moved forward in a way that seemed coordinated and sure? >> again, i was never near the bataclan. we were several hundred meters away. there was a huge number of people in place and special forces in place. i saw several s.w.a.t. teams moving out of the area afterwards. so assuming they were able to get people on to the scene very quickly. i think they probably felt that they had to go in as quickly as they could, given these guys had explosives on them. there didn't seem to be any attempt to negotiate or anything. the point seem tofs been to kill as many people as possible from the beginning. so i think that's why the police rushed in. but i could not say that i was seeing in any way the operation and make a judgment on it.

>> i described it being a fairly warm night in paris and i made an allusion to the fight that the parisian temperament, something like americans would think of as late eerts. 9:30 on a friday night, that's really the time you would be out having dinner. >> absolutel lyabsolutely, that. >> that's early for french dinner? >> what did strike me as i rode my bicycle across town. i did cross a bunch of paris to get to the area. this was about 11:00 at night. i was going to areas around the latin quarters and the bastille area, which normally would be absolutely backed with people pouring in and out of bars. that part of the town, when people heard the news, i think they heeded the warnings to go. it was really eerily quiet. when i got to around the

bataclan, this was more active. there were various onlookers and curiosity seekers and a lot of journalists, obviously, trying to get into the area. i did see something that -- i managed to get a little bit into the perimeter and there was a bar that the police suddenly went to and opened up the gates on. and it's clear that what happened was the people inside the bar had been told to stay inside and they actually put the grills down so they couldn't get down. and the police finally let them go at certain points. there was a mad rush of people who were trapped in the bar for several hours. and then another bar that had been turned into a makeshift emergency station. i saw that later, much later in the evening when the police took down some of the police lines and let us get in a little bit closer. it was quite gruesome. they were cleaning it up, but there were still splotches of blood on the floor. abandoned bloody shoes, discarded surgical gloves with the blood on them. you could tell that an hour

earlier, it had been a complete war zone. >> gregory, reporter for bloomberg news. thanks for being with us tonight. good to have you with us. appreciate it. i should update some news that we had earlier. we had an unconfirmed report where an nbc producer in paris had been told that there was a possibility that one of the band members from eagles of death metal had possibly been killed in this assault. now the manager for the band is making it clear that is not true. no band members from the kra kpra band eagles of death metal was killed in tonight's assault. that's according to the manager from the band. on obviously we've had some social media communication from people close to the band, from band members saying that they're trying to make sure that their crew and everybody they know and traveling through is safe. they've been through an incredible trauma. but the good news is that none of the band members themselves

were killed. in terms of what gregory was just talking about there, in terms of the official response and the capacity for a response, one of the things that i think is hard to get a sense of until it happens is how well big population centers can handle multiple sources of trauma. a lot of people injured or killed. different places where traumatic things are happening, is that the sort of thing that you think we're getting any better at? or is there any way we can sort of have mettics about as lay people, news people before these incidents happen. >> oh, boy, the grisly business of planning for the worst. you know, every first responder in every american city just knows instinctively where the nearest level one trauma center is. and what would you do if a plane chose your town, god forbid, to crash. if the chemical plant on the outskirts of your city blew up.

every first responder drills for that like waking up in the morning. this kind of thing on your own soil, imagine being a first responder in paris or one of the 1,500 soldiers brought in from a kind of bucolic setting where you have a small outpost outside of paris, you're with the french army thinking you're going to have a peacetime deployment. unimaginable. and i keep thinking, american kids visiting paris, college kids on a trip. they're in the middle of a semester overseas. they hear this band is playing. it kills me. >> yeah. and the -- we're hearing from laura heim that she kept stress, these are kids, these are kids, these are kids. it's called the eagles of death metal. this is not 50-year-olds going to see a band like this. they're going to attract a young crowd. i don't know if it's technically an all-ages venue, but they're

going to attract a young crowd. when we start to get the list of victims from that venue, one of the things that's going to be both consequential and heart breaking is that we're going to see people from all over, including people from a number of different countries who are going to have been in that venue and we're going to see a lot of young people. >> yes. perhaps we can grab a clip of the recent episode of "comedy bang bang" they appeared on that show along with colin hanks. especially confirmed if they're all okay, that would be great to see. >> today's violence in paris comes one day after another major city experienced its worst terror attack in years. two suicide bombers blew themselves during rush hour in beirut, lebanon yesterday. killing at least 40 people. wounding 1 hundreds of people. the group isis claimed responsibility, saying they were targeting shiite muslims and shiite hezbollah, which sent

thousands of fiegers to back the syrian government in the civil war next door to lebanon. a russian jet over egypt's sinai peninsula, that crash, all 224 people onboard that plane were killed. we do not know what actually happened in that crash. officials still aren't 100% certain the plane was brought down by terrorists at all. and they're skeptical that isis has the capability to bring down a plane, even if some other terrorist group does. isis claimed it targeted the russian jet in retaliation for russia's involvement in syria. just as they claimed to have targeted hezbollah and shiite civilians in beirut for hezboll hezbollah's involvement in syria. france, of course, launched air strikes in isis in syria in september. but those are all dots. and to connect them in advance of us having reason to connect them is to get ahead of ourselves.

we do not know who the perpetrators are, let alone their motives or what they claim to have been their motives when we find out who they are. as far as anybody can tell, there's no warning to give anybody a chance to get out of the way before these very soft civilian targets were attacked. such terrible effect tonight in paris. notorious for having excellent sources in governments around the world, particularly on national security and diplomatic matters. in term os of what you understand tonight, given the level of sophistication in these attacks, is there surprise internationally that there was -- seems to have been no sign ahead of time. there was no sign -- no chatter, nothing that intelligence officials picked up on ahead of time before this happened? >> i think there has to be. i think after the charlie hebdo attacks, after the attacks we saw on the train, and the other

incident in which you had some over attempted coordinated attacks, france's ministry of defense amped up its deployments. it set up training and coordination programs with the police. more tightly coordinated with intelligen intelligence. it ramped up what it could do domestically inside france without scaring the public, but bringing a greater degree of sophistication, coordination and really muscle to something like this. i talked to the minister of defense here in france in washington on two occasions over the last year and a half about these incidents and about his concerns about growing terrorism throughout the middle east and how that would wash up into europe. i think this is a huge shock to everyone, not just french authorities but everybody in the

with western capital this shouldn't be able to happen. >> this is a low-tech attack, but it was a well run attack as far as we can tell. >> well, people say low tech and sometimes -- you know, i don't quite get that, with all due respect to some of the folks have been raising. when you bring in the level of sophistication, simultaneous sites, a timing, a commitment. clearly the coordination. it's not just a weaponry you use. it's the confidence, it's the methodology, it's the frame work. to call it a low-tech attack, i mean, sometimes remember 9/11 was largely handled with box cutters. it was complex sets of planning that we have seen. so we need to be careful with that designation. >> it's exactly what i mean. there isn't anything that's needed in order to do anything like this in terms of specialty

equipment. this isn't something like -- it doesn't appear to have been largely -- it does knot appear at this point to have been a truck full of fertilizer. it does appear to have been people who were trained, well organiz organized, well coordinated among themselves and had some level of both confidence and combat style discipline in terms of how they carried this out. they held that theatre with a lot of people in it for a very, very long time. there has to have been some intensi intensive training for a group of people to do this, whether or not they were french born, whether or not they were recently disgruntled or long standing. this took training and work in some coordinated fashion. >> well, there are two things that are going to happen at this point. one very worrisome and one hopeful. the worrisome one is that others around the world that want to create these kinds of tragedies are going to try and mimic the playbook of what they saw happen and unfold tonight.

what some people were able to do to bring the world's attention and a great city to a stand still as they have to create mas slaughter. with gun violence, just copycat stuff, but the level at which sophisticated assaults like this go up the chain, that becomes a real problem before it metastasizes around the world. with what we'll see french authorities do is dig into who these people are, their relationships, do forensics on how they met, communicated, and we will also see that come up so that law enforcement authorities and security authorities around the world can attempt to use new methodology to keep that sort of thing from happening again. those two impulses are going to happen at the same time roughly. copty cats and states trying to

figure out how to disrupt this action from happening again. >> steve, thank you very much for being with us tonight. i appreciate it. i want to bring in now nicky wolf. a reporter for the guardian. he's in paris tonight. mr. wolf, as far as i understand it, you've been able to interview some people who were at the nightclub tonight during the siege. thanks very much for joining us. >> hi. i'm actually in new york, but i'm been speaking to people at the stadium in coverage for the nightclub. i've been dealing with eyewitness accounts. >> what can you tell us in terms of what eyewitnesss are saying about the nightclub, what happened inside there and how it came to an end. >> obviously it's utter chaos. saying things like carnage, it looks like a battlefield. and just as horrifying as is possible to imagine.

it came to an end for different people at different times. people were fleeing. people who were having a good time. people started firing. everyone is fleeing. it's a crush of people. we ever police saying there were three who killed themselves using suicide belts. eyewitnesses say that it was so chaotic it was almost impossible to tell. >> one of the things that we've been able to hear in terms of the other eyewitness reports that we've been a i believe to gather is that some people were

able to get out. that some exit doors were available, that there may have been roof access and a nearby apartment. that people used as a sort of escape route. have you heard anything or been able to document anything in terms of how people got out? and what those circumstances were? >> at some point, people in a panic started coming in, looking for shelter. everyone was screaming. there were people having panic attacks. the bar itself was locked down. it became a place where people fled for shelter. it's absolutely the most horrific kind of carnage. it's very difficult on the ground, i think, for people to get a sense of the scale of what's going on around them. you get this eyewitness account that gives you a little glimpse of what one person was seeing,

but the overall picture that's getting painted is absolute carnage. >> the chronology of this attack, there were multiple attackers in different places, launching attacks in very close -- in a very short amount of time. and as far as we can tell, we think that the stadium bombs, the bombs outside, the stadium and the parisian suburbs were probably first. probably followed by the attacks on the restaurants and caves in central paris and that was probably followed by the takeover at the theatre. how long until the attackers were dead. >> that's the order of things happened in terms of how

information was coming through, first offal awe, on social media, and second of all from the police. it seems to have taken roughly the length of this football match, which is part of what's chilling about it. the bombs went off about 20 minutes sbof the football match. and then the match continued playing. francois hollande was evacuated about ten minutes after the at the time nations, and it seems like the shootings and the hostages at the concert happened a little while after that. but by the time we were talking to people coming ouft of the football match, by the time they were getting out, things were beginning to be -- we were into the phase of the hostage situation at the concert. and that was -- that seems to have been the end game phase of this attack.

>> the paris prosecutor has given reporters an update on the numbers of people killed in these attacks tonight, and specifically where people were killed. this is something that we haven't had this much of a breakdown before tonight. so this is new. according to the paris per, he says that six locations were targeted. at the stade de france, the big modern football stadium where that soccer match was happening tonight, he believes that possible three people were killed. some were killed according to the prosecutor, possibly three. it's not clear whether or not that is -- that number from the prosecutor is including any attackers who may have tied there, either with suicide belts or vests or by some other means.

at the rou de charonne, 18 people are believed to have died there. at boulevard voluntary, one person is believed to have died there. at rouix oliver, 14 people are believed to have died there. and the prosecutor went out of his way to say many people were seriously injured at that location. again, this is from the paris prosecutor. he said the death toll was very high. he believes the overall death toll to be as high as 120. he also echoed remarks that we've heard from police sources earlier this evening that

according to french law enforcement that they believe all the attackers involved tonight in these coordinated attacks, they believe all the attackers are dead. they've put the number of attacks at five. but the french police have gone out of their way to say they are still actively searching for any accomplices, each in all of these attackers who directly participated in these events tonight having killed. joining us now from paris is oscar lopez, a reporter for "newsweek." thank you for joining us tonight. >> my pleasure. thank you for having me. >> where were you this evening when the attacks happened and what have you been .able to report? who have you been able to talk with since? >> so i was at a concert and it had just finished. and i checked my phone and i saw it on twitter. i ran down to the area around rue alibert, and it was just ai

don't say. incredible tension. the police were very tense, screaming at people, trying to get everything on lock down. people were at restaurants with the lights shut off. not long afterwards, i spoke to a young boy who was 16 and lived in the area. and he was on his way home and described bodies lying on the ground and covered in sheets. he saw at least five. he saw two people receiving emergency assistance. and he also told me that he actually had been not far from the charlie hebdo attacks. and he just couldn't believe why this kind of thing occurred. it's shocking. >> in terms of -- it's very late

now in paris. nearly 5:00 a.m. i imagine the city is much quite eter now, but presumably there's still active police presence you can see? >> yes. there's definitely police. as i said there, the tension has gone down. after that original reporting, i went over to the hostage situation and was there for a few hours. again, it was incredibly tense. there were hostages being escorted. i did see some that were bloodied. people were very shocked. just incredibly difficult for them. but after at about 2:00 a.m., it felt like the air kind of lifted for a moment and things were finally calmer.

a lot of ambulances around. but once it got to about 1:00 or 2:00 p.m., they seemed to calm down. >> oscar lopez, reporter for "newsweek" in paris tonight. thank you very much for being with us. good to have you with us. >> my pleasure. thank you. >> again, we do not want to direct draw direct comparisons, and in some ways you don't even want analogies. but in terms of trying to understand what else this might be like, trying to extrapolate from previous experiences in terms of who might have done this, who might have been capable of doing it and how it might change us that paris has just gone through this, the am ji for me that keeps coming to mind is mum buy. in erm tos of large scale multicoordinated attacks one is the terrorist attacks in mum buy in india. those took places in this month in 2008. november 2008. so seven years ago this month. terrorists launched a coordin e coordinated multipronged attack in mum buy.

it involved hostage taking and hundreds of civilian casualties. the assault in mum buy included essentially simultaneous attacks on train stations, two five-star hotels and a crowded cafe and a major jewish center in the city. the attack in plum buy went on for days. it wasn't until military commandos stormed the hotels that the assault finally ended. but the end, it was 164 people killed. hundreds more people injured. that was pulled off by ten attackers. and we talk about what kind of groups might be capable of doing this sort of thing, al qaeda has been on everybody's lips today. isis has also been widely discussed today. the mumbai attacks was launched by a terror group which operates

mostly out of pakistan. it was apparently planned four month s ahead of time in pakistn before that attack was carried out. brian, thinking about taiba, thinking about al-shabaab who carried out the westgate shopping center attack which took several die days in nairobi, kenya. thinking about the groups that can do this kind of thing, are we getting ahead of ourselves talking about what we think the character ikss of these groups have to be in order to full off something like this? >> that's a great fe. how small do they have to be to be effective. do they have to have a large, sprawling organization. clearly it will turn out that whoever this was was helped by keeping the communications tight. all this talk about there was no chatter, there was no intel in advance, no heightened security. that's because someone made very

is sure that didn't happen. and every attack to your point earlier has something unique about it. they take presently known history and perversely kind of add to it. as we said earlier tonight, mumbai was important for the way cities look at it because they used fire. they used fire. you know, they hit the oldest art form as a method of terror. from that day forward, the fdmy at their firing academy, and continuing education as they educate firefighters in the city of new york warned when you come upon a fire that seems like it's well planned out, if it involves a hotel, members of the public, you could be in the midst of a terrorist attack. >> yes. and that could be trying to lure a large number of uniformed personnel there. yes. joining us now, it's really nice

to see you again. thank you for being with us. what should we look at in terms of the character of these attacks, the way they were carried out and what we know about the attackers in terms of trying to make logical guesses about who did it. >> well, brian made good points there about how historically, many of these groups do mimic attacks of other groups. however, there are some dynamicics in this which give us information that could be responsible. we saw the charlie hebdo attack earlier this year that three attackers turned out to be radicalized members of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. you made a very good point. it was only ten months ago that we had the charlie hebdo attacks. the attack of this level of sophisticati sophistication, even though it only appeared to have involved six attackers is going to take a lot of preplanning.

they were obviously professionalized class two terrorists. these are life long terrorist professionals. no one can go into a venue and just gun do 150 people while doing almost near perfect reloading drills. it's such a tense situation, without having combat experience under their belt. combat experience where they have jihad, the pleasure, the blood lust of holy war. so for whoever carried out this attack, they operated as a group, they planned as group. it was initiated by suicide bombers at the stadium and they see the path of aggression move on to the second team, which was going to go and move throughout the city and carry out these gun attacks. and then on to the third team which was going to carry what we call the suicide hostage pair cade. and although it looks very

similar to the attack in mumbai, in fact, this is also going to be considered more of a mimic of the charlie hebdo attack, but with the added hostage -- suicide hostage pair cade situation. i don't know who in particular did this attack, but a lot of the indications of the professionalism and the methodology is going to come down to one of the two global jihadi groups that does this as as a living. al qaeda in iraq -- i'm sorry, one of its affiliates or al qaeda's newest it ration, which is the islamic state of iraq in syria. all we can do at this point is learn from what's going on in this particular situation and be prepared to understand that they don't have to have any preintelligence indicators that are going to give you a tipoff. they don't have to have the chatter that you would usually expect when you're talking about a six-man team.

but they did have a logistics side that has not been found. but these suicide belts are going to have to be found. they're going to have to have links of external people outside of france to get full automattic weapons and explosions into downtown paris. these are things french police are going to be working internationally with. just about every organization in the world to identify who these attackers are. and then bring the j us to them. >> malcolm on that point about the logistics, and forgive my ignorance, but i know you know, when we're talking about suicide bombs, and there may be multiple suicide bombs here, we've got reports now that multiple attackers inside that theatre used suicide bombs at the end of that siege. is there open source information

about how to effectively build real working effective suicide belts and suicide vests that we could expect amateurs to make them and have them work? do you need special stuff that's hard to find? are the instructions hard to come by? >> the instructions aren't hard to come up be by. what's hard to come by is the experience to not blow yourself up in your own homemade bomb factory. it's a question of doing it in such a way that you don't kill yourself. the bombs is just merely a delivery system. this is what we call a suicide human-born weapon system, or suicide pedestrian born improvised explosive device. it's the explosive force that does all the killing. and bringing it there via human-guided weapon system, as we like to call them, is just one factor of delivery.

now, i did note at the bomb iin la stade defrance was much lower. they couldn't get into the stadium. so they detonated at the gate.

reporting on this story. laura, i understand you do have some new reporting to add? >> yeah. i have two reports to held you, rachel. according to our sources, the 24-hour news channel, we learn a few minutes ago that eight

terrorists and seven of them are suicide bombers. four of them were killed inside the theatre. three detonated themselves outside the stadium and one was shot apparently in the street near a restaurant op this mall. the other information is the number of injured people. you have more than 110 people who are dead, but you have also more than 200 people who have been injured. among those 200 people injured, 80 are in very serious conditions. so it's a dramatic story, of course. and it's one of the worst attack against a western democracy. >> let me just ask you to reiterate and just clarify, just so i totally understand. the number of -- what your sources are telling you, what's

reported by your home news room is that there have been eight terrorists killed, seven of whom were killed as suicide attackers, four killed as suicide attackers at the theatre, three killed as suicide attackers outside the stadium and one person who was shot to death. >> yeah. we don't know exactly inside the theatre how many were suicide bombers. i just want to emphasize that. i just -- and we don't know under which condition they died. according to our sources, eight terrorists were killed. among those eight terrorists, seven were suicide bombers. it's the first time that suicide bombers are attacking france. >> can you also reiterate the injury numbers that you just stated, laura? >> that's coming from multiple sources from the hospital and from police people. 200 people were injured, 80 seriously. when i'm saying 80 seriously,

they lost an arm, lost an egg. they're in very serious condition. so 200 people injured, 80 seriously. >> laura heim, thank you very, very much. i really appreciate it. brian williams again in studio. we still only have estimates. but what we have are almost unbelievably high numbers. the estimate for the death toll is 120. we believe 100 of those may have died at the theatre. laura telling us the injured estimates is 200 people injured, eight very serious injuries. this makes this, if these numbers hold up, one of the biggest terrorist attacks anywhere in the world. >> yes, and the biggest in paris since the second world war. europe is changing. as someone said tonight, if a discussion of europe does not figure somewhere in our upcoming domestic presidential election, maybe we all have failed. >> and with all of the aggressive counterterrorism

measures that not only our own government, but that all western governments are now enacting, if there was, in fact, a cell of eight activated terrorists who were in operational mode, seven of whom were about to kill themselves with -- as suicide b them until you wanted to die with them. that is going to be something that's hard to come to terms with. >> think about this. nothing happens by accident. they probably had dinner at the cambod cambodian place. minimal to lack security in front of the theater. >> brian williams, it's been a real privilege to work with you on this tonight. we're going to be going to my colleague, chris hays, as our msnbc coverage of paris continues through tonight. chris? >> thank you, rachel. good evening from new york. i'm chris