Harrowing Photographs Shows The Aftermath Inside The Bataclan Theatre, Paris

The attackers came through backstage…. Read. An hour into
the rock concert, the atmosphere was frenetic. The band had just finished
playing a number called Save A Prayer and — having told their raucous Parisian
fans they loved them — they were launching into another favourite, Kiss The
Devil.

How sickeningly ironic these song titles seem now. As the
strobe lights flashed, silhouetting the Eagles of Death Metal drummer Julian
Dorio raising his sticks and white-bearded guitarist Dave Catching thrashing
out a riff, a volley of cracks rang out — so loud they cut right through the
thrumming heavy metal music. Continue…

Many among the hip young crowd whooped and cheered, thinking
it must be some zany pyrotechnical prank. Even when three men burst through the
doors brandishing semi-automatic weapons and bristling with magazines of
ammunition, some thought they were part of the spectacle.

Julian Dorio instinctively knew better. Though partially
blinded by the stage lights, he cowered behind his drum kit. Two other band
members also hurled themselves to the floor. Yet the guitarist stood stock
still beside his microphone, as if paralysed by the enormity of the scene
unfolding below him.

It was around 9.40pm, at one of the coolest venues in Paris,
the Bataclan Concert Hall, just off the Place de la Republique; a room packed
with chic Left Bank intellectuals and a good many Britons clamouring to see the
cult Californian band on their European tour. But that packed hall was about to
become a Dante-esque vision of hell.

A place where the slightest sound or movement — the nervous
twitch of a limb, a whispered word of prayer — could fix some innocent young
person in a gunman’s merciless sights. A place where even disabled rock fans,
sitting helplessly in their wheelchairs, were cut down without a second
thought.

Dressed in black, their faces unmasked, the terrorists had
screeched up in a black car, and sprayed the adjacent cafe with bullets before
bursting into the concert hall.

Among the first to die were those standing closest to the
front doors and drinking at the bar. Within seconds, the cracks grew louder and
more sustained echoing around the hall with hysterical squeals, and
bullet-ridden people began collapsing like dominoes.

However, the hall is quite small, and many of the 1,500 fans
were huddled together so tightly that those who were shot didn’t hit the ground
at first. Instead, they fell, writhing, against those beside them, drenching
them in blood.

‘Allahu Akbar!’ the terrorists bellowed: a cry that is
supposed to glorify the Almighty but has become a mantra for murder. ‘This is
for Syria!’ shouted one in flawless French. ‘It’s Hollande’s fault.’ Now it was
horribly clear who these men were and what they had come for.