It was a mild November night in the French capital, with bars and terraces alive with the usual gatherings and celebrations, until terror struck.
Shortly after 9:00pm, three explosions hit the surrounding areas of the Stade de France, where the national team was facing Germany in an amicable football match in the presence of former president François Hollande and German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
A few minutes later, another group of terrorists attacked people in bars and terraces of the 10th and 11th districts, while a third commando assaulted the Bataclan concert hall, where American band Eagles of Death Metal was in concert.
“It was quite traumatic, obviously, because there were a lot of injured people, a lot of things happening at the same time. My brain has now softened the images I saw a little, probably because it was very, very violent,” says FRANCE 24’s senior reporter Julie Dungelhoeff, who lived close to the Carillon, one of the bars hit by the attacks, at the time.
“I immediately called the newsroom at that moment, saying, ‘Something very serious is happening. I don't know what's going on, but there are deaths’.”
FRANCE 24 senior reporter Johan Bodin, who went to Hospital Georges Pompidou in the 15th district in the early hours of November 14, says that for the first time in his life, he put his camera down.
“There was a 25-year-old man wearing a white T-shirt who came out. He looked distraught and started talking to me in a stammering voice, so I went over to him. He needed to talk, so I listened to him. His sister had just died in his arms. And I comforted him. I admit that I had tears in my eyes at that moment,” he remembers.
A state of emergency was announced in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks. Aside from fear and grief, solidarity and compassion also took over French society.
“For weeks and weeks you had candles, you had pictures, you had messages on the Place de la République celebrating the memory and honour of those victims, saying, ‘we won't give in to terrorism, we won't give in to division’,” says FRANCE 24 senior reporter Clovis Casali.
