Dozens of people are reported to have been killed in and around Paris, in a series of explosions and shootings on Friday night. Witnesses to the attacks have written on social media and spoken to various media outlets to describe what they have seen.

Inside the Bataclan

Julian Peace, a journalist for Europe 1, was inside the Bataclan in the 10th arrondissement, a popular and renowned concert venue, when the attack happened. He told France Inter that two to three people – not wearing face masks – opened fire on the crowd with automatic weapons, possibly, kalashnikovs. He said the shootings lasted 10 to 15 minutes – long enough for the assailants to re-load their weapons two or three times.

Peace told CNN that he heard nothing from the shooters, just the screams of the crowd. However, another witness, who was at the Bataclan with his mother, told France Inter that he heard the assailants screaming “Allahu Akbar” while shooting inside the crowd.

“It was carnage,” Marc Coupris, 57, told the Guardian, still shaking after being freed from being held hostage at the Bataclan, a popular concert venue.

“It looked like a battlefield, there was blood everywhere, there were bodies everywhere. I was at the far side of the hall when shooting began. There seemed to be at least two gunmen. They shot from the balcony.”

“Everyone scrabbled to the ground. I was on the ground with a man on top of me and another one beside me up against a wall. We just stayed still like that. At first we kept quiet. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, it seemed like an eternity.

“I saw my final hour unfurl before me, I thought this was the end. I thought I’m finished, I’m finished. I was terrified. We must all have thought the same. Eventually, when a few gendarmes came in slowly we began to look up and there was blood absolutely everywhere. The police told us to run.”

Coupris, a legal worker, had come from Brittany with 15 friends to see the US band Eagles of Death Metal.

Jérome Boucer, shivering in the cold night wearing a white shirt splattered with the blood of the victims and wounded, told the Guardian: “The concert had started. I was in the audience and I heard what sounded like a firecracker. It was loud but the gig was very loud and I thought it was something that was part of the show. I think lots of people did too. Then they started firing. I saw what I thought was at least two people, then I fled. The exits were clearly marked and I just ran. There were wounded, there was a lot of blood. Blood everywhere.”

“It felt like a film,” added a woman in tears, who was part of Boucer’s group.

“It was horrible, there were so many corpses, I just can’t talk about it,” said a bearded man in a death metal T-shirt as he ran down the street from the Bataclan in shock.

A woman in her twenties 20s in a fur-collared coat had been drinking in a bar close by when people fleeing the initial shooting at the Bataclan ran into the bar. “They were panicked, wounded, screaming, blood was running all over them, people were having panic attacks, it was horrific.”

The bar locked down but after police allowed it to be open again, she began running down the street towards the 3rd arrondissement to get away as fast as possible. As she and her friends ran, a young man with her in an overcoat and scarf said: “Crazy people did this. They were crazy, religious, crazy.”

Clément, an engineer, had been in a bar that everyone had crouched beneath as its not far away which closed its iron shutters were closed and everyone crouched beneath the bar. “Some people in the bar heard shots and the shutters were pulled down. It was Friday night. We were just out with friends for a pastis, as you do on Friday night. The first thing I thought of was the Charlie Hebdo attacks and terrorists. People were really afraid.”

Inside the Stade de France

Xavier Barret, a sports photographer for L’Equippe, was watching the France-Germany game with his children. He was in the press box and his 19-year-old daughter and five-year-old son were in the stands. Roughly 20 minutes into the match he heard “a big boom, something like ‘boom’,” he told the Guardian. “I said, this is incredible, I’ve never heard this kind of noise in the stadium.” Three minutes later, he said, there was another boom.

The teams didn’t stop playing, he said, but within ten minutes of the detonations other photographers who were watching the presidential box said that president Francois Hollande had left the stadium.

At half time, Barrett said, people began to tell him “there’s a big trouble in the centre of Paris, people dead.” They didn’t know where. “Nobody knows anything. I tried to text my daughter, tell her be careful, stay in the stadium at the end of the game, we will be together … she tells me, ‘OK’.”

Mid-way through the second half, he said, people began to try to leave, but the gate stayed closed. Security guards told people to go back into the stadium, he said. At the end of the game, an announcement came over the speaker saying that because of problems outside, people shouldn’t leave through one of the exits. People tried to leave through the other three, but came running back and went on to the pitch, Barret said.

“Most of the people were afraid, because by this time they had heard by telephone or on the internet that there were bombings outside, and in Paris,” he said. 15 minutes later, they allowed people to leave through one of the exits.

Barret and his children left the stadium. The people leaving the stadium were largely quiet, he told the Guardian; more panicked were the people outside looking for family members leaving the game. Those people “were very very stressed,” he said. “We spoke with a man who was like, ‘where did you come from – I’m looking for my son, but he doesn’t have any battery.’”

Outside, he said, police were telling people they couldn’t go to the metro, and that they should get taxis. There were no taxis, so he called his wife who came to pick them up.

Speaking with France Inter radio, several witnesses were in tears. A woman who was near Rue Charonne said the scene was absolutely catastrophic. “I worked in hospitals, I studied medicine, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Me and my son ran back to get some help, and literally ran into a number of bodies. It was “a carnage”, she said. People were lying dead on the floor, badly hurt and screaming. “I’ll never forget it.”

Parisians going home

Parisians who live in the neighbourhoods which were under attack on Friday night, have to make their way home. A hashtag, #portouverte (open door) is now underway: Parisians are opening their doors to those who might not be able to make it home.