Le Monde journalist Daniel Psenny, whose apartment overlooks the emergency exit of the Bataclan has posted an extraordinary video, of people clambering out of windows to escape from the theatre – a scene he said reminded him of 9/11.
The video is graphic and includes images of what appear to be dead bodies.
Psenny himself was shot in the arm as he attempted to help people shelter in his apartment, and is being treated at the Georges-Pompidou hospital. (From the Guardian news update feed)
"I was trying to do some work at home. The TV was on, playing a cop film starring Jean-Hugues Anglade. I heard a noise which sounded like firecrackers and initially I was convinced that it was in the film. But the noise was so loud, I went to the window. I live on the second floor and my apartment overlooks the emergency exit of the Bataclan.
Sometimes there are evacuations [in the past], but everyone was running out from all directions. I saw people on the floor, and blood... I understood then that it was something serious. I asked passersby what was happening. Everyone was running toward the Rue Amelot or the boulevard Voltaire.
A woman was clinging to the window of the Bataclan, on the second floor. I thought of those images from September 11.
So, I told myself I was going to open up to people, so they could come and take refuge. Therefore, I opened the door to my apartment. There was a man lying on the pavement and an another man whom I did not see again, he was shot as he was trying to take shelter in the lobby.
That’s the moment I took a bullet. I don’t remember much after that, I have a blank, but I remember feeling like a firecracker had exploded in my left arm and I saw that it was pissing blood. I think the shooter was at the window of the Bataclan. I went up to some neighbours on the fourth floor.
The guy we did get in [to the apartment] was shot in the leg. He was an American. He vomited, he was cold and we thought he was going to die. We called the emergency services but they couldn’t get us out. I called a friend who is a doctor and she explained how to make a tourniquet with my shirt. We were stuck in the apartment until the police raid occurred and they came to find us."