‘People folded like the wheat against wind’

– France suffered its deadliest ever terror attack when jihadist suicide bombers killed 130 people and wounded 350 others in 2015. Here we look back at how the night of carnage unfolded:

Stade de France

At France’s national stadium in Saint-Denis during a football match between France and Germany, three suicide bombers blow themselves up at the gates between 9:20 pm and 9:53 pm. A 63-year-old Portuguese bus drive Manuel Colaco Dias, is killed.

French President Francois Hollande is one of the 80 000 people in the crowd and he is discreetly evacuated from the stadium to avoid triggering a mass panic.

“It is a horror,” he says a few hours later in his televised address.

Cafes and restaurants

At the same time, a group of black-clad gunmen riding a black Seat car spray bullets at terrified evening drinkers in trendy central districts of the capital.

In a deadly half-hour 39 people are gunned down by assault rifles.

Le Petit Cambodge restaurant and Carillon bar near Saint-Martin canal are the first to come under attack at 9:25 pm, followed by the Bonne Biere cafe, the Casa Nostra pizzeria and the Belle Equipe restaurant.

At another bar, Le Comptoir Voltaire, one of the gunmen blows himself up, but no one else is killed.

Bataclan

Two kilometres away at the Bataclan music hall, a concert is in full swing with a 1 500-strong crowd enjoying the rock group Eagles of Death Metal.

At 9.40 pm a black Volkswagen Polo with Belgian number plates draws up outside the venue. Three men get out, guns in hands and strapped with explosives. The bloodbath lasts more than three hours and leaves 90 people dead.

“I see people fold like wheat against the wind,” said one survivor, aged 24 at the time.

“I turn around, I see two armed people who shoot at anything that moves... I find myself on the ground with everyone.”

Some spectators manage to escape, others hide in the false ceilings or on the roof, while on the ground several terrified people pretend they are dead among the corpses.

“With my boyfriend we kept on saying we loved each other. So much so that a guy said to us: ‘Shut up, you're making too much noise’. I felt this urgency to say I loved,” said a young woman.

A policeman enters shortly before 10pm and fires at a gunman who had remained downstairs. His suicide device blows up.

The two other gunmen held hostage a dozen people upstairs. The two gunmen are killed when elite security forces put an end to the assault at 18 minutes past midnight. –