Adam Nossiter

If another example of the failure of European intelligence services to share and act on information about potential terrorists was needed, Wednesday’s identification of the bombers in the deadly Brussels attacks the day before certainly provides it.

Since the November attacks in Paris, the Belgian authorities have conducted dozens of raids, combed whole neighborhoods for well-known militants and even locked down the capital for days. Yet none of that evidently disrupted plans for the attacks on Tuesday in Brussels.

Heavily armed gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” stormed a Radisson Blu Hotel early Friday in Bamako, the capital of the West African nation of Mali, seizing scores of hostages and leaving bodies strewed across the building.

Three teams of Islamic State attackers acting in unison carried out the terrorist assault in Paris on Friday night, officials said Saturday, including one assailant who may have traveled to Europe on a Syrian passport along with the flow of migrants.

Witnesses said three men shouting “Allahu akbar” burst into the hall. Instantly there was bloodshed, with witnesses saying they heard sustained gunfire. Others said grenades had been thrown into the crowd.

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.