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Shocking footage of the Bataclan attack emerges

Still from Le Monde journalist's video
Still from Le Monde journalist's video

Daniel Psenny, a journalist for leading French newspaper Le Monde who lives behind the Bataclan, recorded disturbing footage as dozens of spectators fled the Bataclan concert hall last night.

A Paris city hall official said four gunmen systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people at the venue, where the Californian rock group Eagles of Death Metal was performing.

In the footage, a number of people lie dead on the floor while others hang from first-floor windows in an attempt to get out alive. The reporter can be heard yelling: "What is going on?"

The venue is near the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the target of a deadly attack by Islamist gunmen in January.

Psenny himself is reportedly in hospital awaiting treatment, according to Le Monde. He sustained an injury to his arm while attempting to assist the injured outside his apartment.

"I was working at home," he told Le Monde. "The TV was on, it was broadcasting a film in which Jean-Hugues Anglade plays the role of a cop. I heard a noise like firecrackers, and at the beginning I was convinced that it was in the film. But the noise was loud, so I went to the window. I live on the second floor, and my apartment overlooks the emergency exits Bataclan. Sometimes there are some rough evacuation, but then everyone was running from all sides, I saw guys on the floor, blood ... I understood that there was something serious.

"I asked what was happening. Everyone flowed back to the Rue Amelot and Boulevard Voltaire. A woman was clinging to the Bataclan window on the second floor. I thought of the images of Sept. 11.

"I then said I would go down to open to people so they can take refuge. So I opened the door of the building. There was a man lying on the sidewalk. [...] I took a bullet at that time. I don't remember it; it's a blank. But I remember I felt like a firecracker exploding in my left arm, and I saw that it was pissing blood.

"I think the shooter was at the Bataclan window. The man we got to was shot in the leg. An American. He vomited, he was cold, we thought he would die. We called the fire department, but they could not evacuate us. I called a doctor friend who told me how to make me a tourniquet with my shirt."

*Warning: Video contains extremely graphic and disturbing imagery