ISU student Emily Wright was in Stade de France for the Parisian soccer match against Germany on Friday when a bomb went off outside the stadium during the first half of the game, the start of a terrorist attack against France’s capital city.

“We heard a really loud ‘boom’ noise,” Wright said. “I thought it was fireworks or cannons or something related to the game. It wasn’t until sometime in the second half that one of my friends messaged me and said there was a shooting in a restaurant. And that’s when we pieced together that those really loud noises were bombs.”

Wright, who is studying abroad this semester in the ESSEC Business School in Cergy, France — about a 40-minute train ride from the heart of Paris — was in the middle of a terrorist attack, later to be discovered as brought on by members of ISIS, President Francois Hollande said.

Hollande was in the stadium at the time of the attacks, too, The New York Times reported. 

After the suicide bomb detonated outside of the stadium at about 9:20 p.m. in France on Friday, American rock band Eagles of Death Metal were playing in one of this city’s popular music venues, the Bataclan, for about an hour when four men with AK-47 assault rifles entered the concert. Some shouted “Allahu akbar” before they opened fire for about 20 minutes, The New York Times reported.

Those who were not killed in open-fire were held hostage for two hours before police advanced, killing one gunman after the three others blew themselves up, according to French television stations.

In total, three suicide bombs were detonated outside of the stadium, shootings occurred at four different restaurants and 89 were killed in the concert shooting. The death toll for victims totaled 129 people as of Sunday afternoon, according to The New York Times, with more than 350 people wounded and 99 of them in critical condition.

It wasn’t until after the game when Wright and her friends began to leave the stadium that she found out the loud noises they heard were bombs. Wright said she was walking toward the stadium exits when people started rushing back into the stadium.

“I didn’t know what they were running from, and that just kind of freaked everyone else out,” Wright, senior in accounting, said. “My friends and I just took off running away from the exit. I don’t even have words to describe. It was the scariest moment of my life because I didn’t know who they were running from or what they were running from, but we stayed in the stadium for a little bit longer.” 

She said they were able to leave the stadium through certain exits, but the streets were filled with Parisians consumed with panic and fear.  

“So many people didn’t know what was going on,” Wright said. “At the football [soccer] match, there were so many children there. They don’t know what’s going on, and it just breaks my heart. You see parents just pick up their kids and start walking quickly out and running. You hear about this on the news, it’s just something I never thought I would be in the middle of.”

Wright said she and her friends did not want to take a train or go deeper into the city because they had heard of the multiple attacks. She and her friends checked in with friends and family to tell them they were OK. They tried to get a room at a nearby hotel, which did not accept them. Instead, the group waited for two hours to find a taxi, eventually getting an Uber that was able to maneuver through the many closed streets of Paris.

When she got back to her apartment in Cergy, Wright said she broke down.

“It was the scariest night of my life,” she said. “I didn’t think I would ever have to experience something like that in my whole life. I didn’t even see any of the casualties, but just the thought that where I was was a target for a terrorist attack … it’s sickening.”

On Friday, Hollande blamed ISIS for the attacks, and the Islamic State declared they were responsible for the terrorist attacks through their messaging platform Telegram. They called the attacks “the first of the storm” and mocked France as a “capital of prostitution and obscenity,” The New York Times reported. The message was then distributed on Twitter by the terrorist group’s supporters across the world.

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. A self-proclaimed Islamic State, ISIS controls areas in Iraq and Syria inhabited by about 10 million people. ISIS calls itself a caliphate, an Islamic form of government controlled by someone considered to be a successor of the prophet Muhammad.

Jürgen Todenhöfer, a German journalist who spent 10 days embedded in ISIS, published that in his stay he determined ISIS’ goal was to “conquer the world” and kill anyone who does not believe in their interpretation of the Koran.

U.S. President Barack Obama pledged allegiance to Paris after the attack.

“This is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share,” Obama said. “We stand prepared and ready to provide whatever assistance the people of France need to respond.”

Wright said she went to the grocery store in Cergy on Saturday, and the streets were oddly vacant and security was posted at each door, checking shoppers’ bags. She said she is concerned there will be more attacks, but doesn’t think the French borders being closed will affect her return home at the end of December.

“I definitely agree that we should be supporting those in Paris,” Wright said. “It’s just a traumatic event. So many families are broken and lives are lost. They need as much support as they can get.”