A Sydney man living in Paris says the French people are standing strong, but do not believe they have seen the last terrorist attack in their country.
Glen Condie, who lives just a few hundred metres from the Bataclan concert hall where hundreds of people were killed and injured by machine gun fire, told SBS News people were upbeat, but realistic.
“Not a single Parisian I’ve spoken to believes this is the last thing they’ll see,” he said.
“They expect there to be more.”
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He said Friday’s attacks, which have killed 132 people and injured more than 350, were different to the Charlie Hebdo murders in January because there was a sort of logic to those attacks, “as twisted as that logic might be”.
“In this case you’re talking about individuals killing people they’ve not even met before,” Mr Condie said.
“What’s probably affected Parisians more is the terror has come to completely unremarkable neighbourhood streets.
“You might be able to protect the Stade de France or the Opera House or the Harbour Bridge, but imagine if people started running down [the street] with machine guns?
“It’s in places where you can’t protect and where people wouldn’t think to protect.
“There’s sawdust on the streets to soak up the blood, there’s plastic gloves from the medics with blood on them – things you should not have to see.”
Mr Condie said he and his girlfriend fortuitously decided not to have dinner at one of their favourite restaurants just 50 metres away from the Bataclan.
Instead he was at another restaurant when his phone started buzzing with anxious enquiries about his safety from friends and family.
“The girl at the next table heard a friend had been injured so she left and we were herded to the back of the restaurant [away from the windows],” Mr Condie said.
He said he and his girlfriend made the “10 minute terrifying scurry” back to his home about 400 metres from the Bataclan where they could hear bangs as the Frencg police stormed the concert hall.
“There’s sawdust on the streets to soak up the blood, there’s plastic gloves from the medics with blood on them – things you should not have to see.”
“It was quite a traumatising night,” he told SBS.
Mr Condie said the French banded together when their strong-held values were questioned.
“When you challenge their baseline values of liberte, egalite, fraternite they want to show their solidarity and they want to show they will not be affected by people trying to tear at those things,” he said.
“You can’t keep Parisians down – they’ve been through hell and high water so many times. There’s just a strength in their character.”
Mr Condie said on Saturday he and his girlfriend were walking back to the Place de la Repbulique following a memorial service at Notre Dame when “suddenly people just started running” from what later turned out to be a false alarm.
“Everybody’s on such a knife edge; they have a hair trigger.”
Mr Condie said he believed once the three days of national mourning ended Parisians would start returning to their everyday lives, as they did after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
“What you will then see, towards the end of the week, will be a big demonstration and that is to say, ‘We’re not scared, you can’t scare us’.”
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