Fresh details have emerged of the police operation against the terrorists who stormed the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, with one officer likening the scene on the ground floor to “something from Dante’s hell”.



10pm: first police enter Bataclan

According to Le Monde newspaper, the first officer entered the building towards 10pm on Friday. Ten minutes earlier, three gunmen had burst into a rock concert by the US group Eagles of Death Metal and begun shooting people in the main auditorium. The three terrorists were Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, 29, Samy Amimour, 28, and a third man who has not yet been identified.

The officer immediately came “nose to nose” with one of the terrorists, Le Monde reported. He shot at him and the terrorist’s belt exploded. It was unclear whether the gunman had blown himself up or whether the officer’s bullet ignited the belt.

More police followed. “When we entered it was dark,” a member of the first armed response unit, identified as Jean, told MYTF1 news. “There were dozens of bodies tangled all over the floor, dead and wounded. And survivors who were pretending to be dead, fearing that we were also terrorists.

“Everybody was asking for help. People were whispering, fearful the shooting might resume. For us, the priority was to secure the area. We carried on. It was unclear if the two terrorists were still there, and if they were there, where they were.”

While the first unit secured the ground floor, an elite squad of heavily armed reinforcements arrived from France’s rapid intervention brigade. One officer told Le Monde he had found “a scene from Dante’s hell”. He said the smell was unbearable, the silence appalling. The only sound came from the ringing of mobile phones as relatives and friends tried to contact their loved ones.

10.15pm: pincer movement to balcony

At 10.15pm two groups of 20 armed elite officers went up on to the balcony in a pincer movement, via two staircases. The two surviving gunmen were holed up in a room upstairs.



Working in two columns, the police checked every room on the first floor, and every corner, one by one. Several hostages had been hiding there – in cupboards and false ceilings. “We pulled out the hostages. They were walking like zombies. They were in a stunned state,” Jean told MYTF1 news. “They were struggling to move forward.”

11.15pm: terrorists’ hostage warns officers not to storm

At 11.15pm, the police reached a door. They heard a voice. The voice came from a hostage, Sébastien, whom the Isis cell had been using as a guide. “He cried out and said that the terrorists were with them, and said that if the police were to open the door they would blow everything up,” Jean explained.



Sébastien told RTL radio that the terrorists seemed pleased with their carnage but keen to justify their acts. He said: “They gave us their sermon, their speech, the why they were there. They explained to us that the bombs being dropped on Syria were the reason why they were there. They said they were doing to us westerners what we were doing to them over there.”

Sébastien said he was with the gunmen for almost two and a half hours. “They took us in the hall where the injured were still dying. They told us that it was just the start and the war was now beginning. They told us they were there in the name of Islamic State and they asked if we agreed with them. I’ll leave you to imagine the painful silence there was at that moment. The more timid nodded their head and those more brave said yes.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pedestrians walk past a police fence which cordons off the entrance of the Bataclan music venue in Paris. Photograph: Malte Christians/dpa/Corbis

11.20pm – 12.20am: tense standoff between gunmen and police

Between 11.20pm and 12.20am, there was a standoff between the gunmen and police. One of the terrorists agreed to give a mobile number. The police called five times but there were no negotiations. The terrorists said that if the police did not leave they would shoot and decapitate their hostages and toss their bodies over the balcony. They added that they wanted to talk to the media.

“The only real demand they made during the four or five calls they had was that the police pulled back and did not come near in any circumstances,” Sébastien said. “They asked us to look out of the window and say where the police were and tell them to keep away. We were intermediaries, but more than that … we were human shields.”

Sébastien said one of the terrorists gave him a wad of money and asked him to get out a lighter and set it on fire. “They wanted to see if money was important to me. I felt like Gainsbourg [Serge Gainsbourg set light to a banknote on live television] at that moment, except that I was forced to do it. So you see there was a kind of exchange. At the end, the hostages thanked me.”

The officers inside the theatre had all taken part in tackling the siege in January at the Jewish supermarket where Amédy Coulibaly had taken customers hostage. He was eventually killed.

12.20am: order to end siege

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At 12.20am the order was given to end the siege. Behind the door was a narrow corridor about 12 metres long, with the two terrorists at one end and several hostages in the middle. A medical team was on standby.



The first two officers opened the door, crouching behind a Kevlar shield. The goal was to move forward as quickly as possible to rescue the hostages. “As soon as the door opened, the terrorists opened fire. It was very violent, very noisy,” Jean said. Thirty bullets hit the shield. The hostages screamed, and lay flat on the ground. The column moved forward, leading freed hostages back to safety. Sébastien pulled a pregnant woman, who was dangling from a window, back into the building.

All hostages scrambled clear. The officers then set off half a dozen stun grenades, followed by a second round of defensive grenades. They opened fire and, according to Le Monde, saw “a shadow falling”. It turned out to be one of the terrorists. There was then an explosion as the last terrorist blew himself up. The assault lasted three minutes. One officer was wounded from a bullet that ricocheted off a wall and hit his right hand.

Sébastien said he had jumped on to the stage when the shooting started and tried to hide. The terrorists found him. He said he was aware that one wrong word could cost him his life.

“From the moment they started speaking, I began to tell myself that perhaps I was destined to live, because it would have been so easy to kill me at that moment. I was at his mercy and that image remains engraved [in my head], but it was also the beginning of hope, strange as it may seem, because I had fled, I wanted to hide, and when they found me they didn’t kill me. That was my luck.”