(Deutsche Welle) The bomb went off in the heart of Paris at 5:30 p.m., the height of the post-workday rush hour. A giant fireball raced down the platform of the Saint-Michel–Notre-Dame metro station after a gas container filled with shrapnel exploded in a train car on the regional RER B line. The explosion killed eight people and injured more than 100, some critically.
As Prime Minister Alain Juppe and President Jacques Chirac rushed to the scene, they had no way of knowing that July 25, 1995, would mark just the first in the series of nationwide terror attacks.
Investigators were aware from early on that the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), a radical Islamist organization, was behind the terrorist act. With the bombing, the group had managed to bring the ongoing civil war in Algeria, a fight between Islamists and the military, to the country’s former colonial ruler.
