PARIS — There was a moment — just a moment — when the concert hall was eerily quiet. The rock band had stopped playing, and people had dived to the floor after realizing the sudden explosions hadn’t been part of the show. Everything was silent.
Then the attackers started again, strafing the crowd with automatic gunfire. There were screams of terror, the staccato of Kalashnikovs and cries of the wounded, followed by a standoff with police and the explosions of suicide bombs.
By the time the ordeal was over at one of Paris’ celebrated entertainment venues, 89 people were dead and many more were wounded, entangled bodies in pools of blood.
A French survivor summed it up with one word: “Hell.”
It was a sell-out crowd at the Bataclan on Friday for the 9 p.m. concert by an American group, the Eagles of Death Metal. Less than an hour after the band began its set, a series of bangs rang out. Many thought it was firecrackers or pyrotechnics.
“Everyone thought it was part of the show, but then I saw the lead singer’s face drop before he ran off stage, and the lights came on,” university student Hanna Corbett, 21, told the Nottingham Post newspaper of Britain.
