they did not know this was come being. it involved multiple locations. it involved a lot of people. it involved explosives. it involved assault weapons. is there a great fear that something like that could happen in the united states when they say they are not worried, they don t hear chatter, there is chatter happening somewhere that he tha they cannot see? well, in the case of france, they had thwarted five previous attacks and in this case, obviously, they were not able to get the intelligence despite the effectiveness of their intelligence apparatus. this goes to the original criticism of the full year that was spent with isis developing in raqqa, syria, beginning to take cities one after another, fallujah, mosul, without any response from the united states. we did not use our air power back when isis was on the open desert road, despite calls from many calls from us in congress to use our air power to eliminate isis when it was a
from share syria and iraq to continue. we can t have this attack repeated month after month in europe in the west. i think it really could change everything when it comes to the western response to the syrian war, if indeed, it is isis that is responsible. clearly, a lot of suspicion this is some kind of isis attack because they are getting increasingly into the international terror business and promising and threatening exactly this kind of attack. right. at this moment i want to make sure everyone knows there is no formal claim of responsibility for who perpetrated these attacks. we understand there were six to seven across paris in these attacks. we don t have a death toll at this time. more than 118 is the number we have. we know that number will be going up. we do not know what happened to those attackers. there are so many questions we do not know right now the
they have closed the borders. there s a state of emergency we haven t seen scenes like this since the second world war in europe and this is not just a one-off event. i think we can expect a lot more of this in europe in the future. unfortunately, this is just the beginning. more than 6,000 european nationals are traveling to syria and iraq, many joining isis. 1500 back in europe. i speak to intelligence officials. they are completely overstretched. they cannot monitor everybody all the time and that s why they are taking some of these emergency measures now in france. it s going to be a lot of concern moving ahead and there have been a lot of warning signs for some time. back in january, in belgium, they plotted a major plot, a gun attack when they raided in eastern belgium. that was an isis-directed plot. isis increasingly getting involved in the terrorism business as we ve seen over the last weeks and days.
with the group and a number who have come back. there s been a huge concern in france over the last year since the charlie hebdo attacks, since the attack against the kosher market, particularly the isis terror threat. every week they are getting new intelligence on new plotting, erin. chairman royce, have you been briefed? what are you able to tell us right now? first i should tell you our sympathies are with the people of france. there are 185 fighters in france who have returned from syria and one of the concerns we ve had for some time now is the request by isis that their fighters carry out attacks on soft targets in france. three french jihadists who were isis fighters recently appeared in a video and called for these attacks and isis formally does this on a regular basis.
clear target and my concern is that as a result of them taking so much territory, they have been able to recruit worldwide on the internet, bring fighters in, train them because they now have a terrorist state basically where they can train them to use bombs, they can train them how to use automatic weapons. and then ship those fighters out. so it s very much a concern. paul, you also are going to have your questioning. we know that france, in terms of syrian refugees, have accepted far fewer, about 20,000, a diminumos number. we have to remember, these refugees are fleeing the same terror that we ve just saw. yes. in paris tonight. they want to get out of syria. they want to get out of iraq. they want to get out of libya. they want safety for their families. there have been hardly any cases of refugees being terrorists or