http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... aclan.htmlThe Guardian has been interviewing numerous witnesses in Paris, including 57-year-old Marc Coupris:
“It was carnage,” Marc Coupris, 57, told the Guardian, still shaking after being freed from being held hostage at the Bataclan, a popular concert venue.
“It looked like a battlefield, there was blood everywhere, there were bodies everywhere. I was at the far side of the hall when shooting began. There seemed to be at least two gunmen. They shot from the balcony.”
“Everyone scrabbled to the ground. I was on the ground with a man on top of me and another one beside me up against a wall. We just stayed still like that. At first we kept quiet. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, it seemed like an eternity.
“I saw my final hour unfurl before me, I thought this was the end. I thought I’m finished, I’m finished. I was terrified. We must all have thought the same. Eventually, when a few gendarmes came in slowly we began to look up and there was blood absolutely everywhere. The police told us to run.”
Libération interviewed a 23-year-old Turkish woman who identified herself as Fahmi B. and told a harrowing story of escape:
I was in the pit, when suddenly I heard noises, like fireworks. At the time I thought it was part of the show, then I turned around and I saw a person who had just taken a bullet in the eye. She grabbed her head and collapsed. Then, everyone got on the ground, we were hearing shots. The shooters were shooting at random at people who were lying down, everyone was playing dead but it didn’t make any difference for them. I was lying in the fetal position but my feet were blocked by someone’s body. I managed to slide my feet out of my shoes and I ran backstage, because an exit was just nearby, with three other people, who were injured.
AFP interviewed one Pierre Janaszak, who says he overheard the terrorists talking to hostages while hiding in a bathroom:
I locked myself in a bathroom upstairs, there were four of us in the bathroom, they didn’t come there. They were guarding the hostages, and I heard them talk with them. They were saying that they had 20 hostages, but I didn’t go see and verify. … I heard them trying to negotiate with the police out the window. I clearly heard them say to the hostages, “It’s Hollande’s fault, it’s your president’s fault, he doesn’t have to intervene in Syria.” They also talked about Iraq. … Then we heard shooting when the police intervened. There was shooting in all directions, there were more explosions. The police opened the door (of the bathroom) and told us to get out. They asked me to take off my shirt before leaving, to be sure that I didn’t have a bomb on me.
An inside picture from the Bataclan taken some years ago.
They possibly failed to commit their suicide bomb the way they wanted at the Stade de France. That could have been much worse.