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.