RICK GLADSTONE

The State Department said Friday that a U.S. citizen missing in Syria has been released by the Syrian authorities.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has ordered the start of a military withdrawal from Syria, where Russian forces have been bombing insurgent enemies of the government for five months.

The Paris area reeled Friday night from a shooting rampage, explosions and mass hostage-taking that President François Hollande called an unprecedented terrorist attack on France. His government announced sharply increased border controls and heightened police powers as it mobilized the military in a national emergency.

A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard exploded, crashed and burned on a flowered wheat field Thursday in a part of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russia separatists, blown out of the sky from 33,000 feet by what Ukrainian and U.S. officials described as a Russian-made anti-aircraft missile.