Paris attacks: Harrowing video captures concertgoers fleeing Bataclan

A French journalist who lives in an apartment behind the Bataclan in Paris captured harrowing footage of concertgoers attempting to escape the concert hall during Friday's terror attacks before he was wounded trying to help a victim on the street below.

Daniel Psenny, a journalist at Le Monde, was working at home when he heard what he thought were firecrackers.

"The TV was on — it was showing a movie in which Jean-Hugues Anglade plays a cop," Psenny said in an interview with the newspaper. "I heard a noise like firecrackers, and at the beginning I was convinced that it was in the movie. But the noise was loud, so I went to the window."

He lives on the second floor overlooking the Bataclan's emergency exits.

"Sometimes there are some rough evacuations," Psenny explained, "but at that moment, everyone was running from all sides, I saw guys on the floor, blood ... I understood that it was serious."

He began filming. Shots can be heard as concertgoers begin spilling out into the alleyway below his apartment. Several victims are assisted by fellow concertgoers on the street — one leaving a trail of blood on the concrete — as three people cling to a window on the side of the hall above the emergency exit.  Near the curb, the body of one victim lies next to the light of a cellphone.

Warning: Video contains graphic footage.

Psenny decided to go down to open the door to the apartment building so victims could take shelter.

"I opened the door of the building, and there was a man lying on the sidewalk," he said. "With another man, I pulled him into the lobby."

That's when Psenny believes he was shot in the left arm.

"I must have taken a bullet at that moment," he said. "I don't remember it; it's a blank. But I remember feeling like a firecracker was exploding in my left arm, and I saw that it was pissing blood."

Psenny thinks the gunman was firing from a window at the Bataclan.

[Live coverage: Paris terror attacks]

The victim he helped pull inside the building was an American who was shot in the leg.

"He vomited, he was cold," Psenny said. "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 a tourniquet with my shirt."

Psenny was later taken to the hospital, where he was awaiting surgery along with approximately 30 other victims.

At least 127 people were killed in the series of terror attacks across Paris, including at least 87 at the sold-out concert hall.

[Slideshow: Paris under attack]

Julian Pearce, a journalist for Europe 1, was inside Bataclan when shots rang out.

"We found ourselves facing at least three assailants armed with assault rifles, Kalashnikovs, who discharged their weapons on us, firing blindly," Pearce told Yahoo News. "I stayed huddled for several long minutes on the ground, protected by several people above me who probably saved my life. I had difficulty breathing."

While on the ground, Pearce said he saw the faces of some of the gunmen.

"I tried to look through the gaps," he said. "I saw these very determined men reloading and continuing their grisly mission without any qualms. I saw their faces. The closest one to me was a very young man, maybe only 20 years old. He had a beard, and a blank expression. He was like a killing machine. He methodically slaughtered people, even those who begged him for mercy, and he simply reloaded and continued."

While one of the gunmen reloaded, Pearce was able to move inside a room near the side of the stage, eventually escaping through the emergency exit.