Paris attacks: Video shows firefight outside Bataclan
An award-winning French photographer captured dramatic video footage of police as they surrounded the Bataclan concert hall, where at least 89 people were killed in the deadliest of Friday's terror attacks in Paris.
Patrick Zachmann told Time magazine he was finishing dinner in Paris' Republique Square when police cars and fire trucks sped by the restaurant.
"I knew something was strange,” Zachmann said. “I immediately thought of a terrorist attack.”
He followed police to the Bataclan and started filming, taking cover behind an unmarked police car as sirens gave way to the sound of gunfire.
“I heard the shootings from a Kalashnikov,” Zachmann said. “In the videos, you can actually see the sparks [from the bullets hitting the ground] near the policeman.”
It wasn't clear what direction the bullets were coming from:
At one point, a police officer joined Zachmann behind the parked car. Holding a pistol, the officer advised the photographer to move slightly to the left to use the car’s wheels as protection from potential strayed bullets.
"He seemed tensed, very concentrated,” Zachmann says. “I could feel his fear. I could feel that maybe he was not used to this situation. They are trained, but maybe it was the first time he was on [such] a scene. But there was a kind of complicity [between the two of us]. He could have asked me to leave, but he let me [stay] there.”
In Zachmann's footage, police can be seen shielding a woman as they lead her away from the front of the Bataclan.
“It was panic," he said. "You felt that it was not under control."
Daniel Psenny, a journalist at Le Monde, also captured video of the chaos from his second-floor apartment behind the concert hall.
In Psenny's footage, concertgoers are seen spilling out of an emergency exit into the alleyway below. Several victims are assisted by fellow concertgoers on the street — one leaving a trail of blood on the concrete — as three people cling to a window on the side of the hall above the emergency exit. Near the curb, the body of a victim lies next to the light of a cellphone.
Psenny was shot while helping pull one wounded concertgoer into his building but survived.
"I must have taken a bullet at that moment," he told the newspaper. "I don't remember it; it's a blank. But I remember feeling like a firecracker was exploding in my left arm, and I saw that it was pissing blood."
Warning: Video contains graphic footage.
