Paris: A five-year-old boy survived the massacre in Paris’ Bataclan theatre after he was sheltered from the bullets by the body of his dead mother. The boy, Louis, was at the Eagles of Death Metal concert, along with his mother Elsa Delplace, 35, and his grandmother Patricia San Martin, 61, when they were attacked by terrorists, The Independent said.
Delplace and Martin were shot dead as they tried to protect Louis, who was found covered in blood. Delplace’s friend, Sihem Souid, in a tribute in Le Point magazine, wrote: “Elsa Delplace and her mother Patricia died on Friday under a hail of bullets inside the Bataclan.
“Her son Louis, her ray of sunshine, was with her. Louis was found in Vincennes hospital, distraught and covered in his mother's blood as she tried to protect him from the bullets,” a witness said.
“Elsa was a joyous person who always had a smile on her lips, even at difficult times. She was involved in the voluntary, cultural and artistic worlds. She played the cello brilliantly. She always fought against injustice. I think it was part of her family — her Chilean mother fled the dictatorship of Pinochet,” the witness added.
As many as 89 people died in the Bataclan theatre on Friday night when gunman opened fire before detonating suicide vests. Forty others were killed in co-ordinated attacks across the city in various restaurants and outside the Stade de France football stadium. Tributes have flooded in for all the victims of the attacks.
In a Facebook post, French journalist Antoine Leiris, whose wife Muyal-Leiris also died in the Bataclan attack, said: “You will not have my hatred”. He said: “I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know, you are dead souls. If this God for whom you kill blindly made us in his image, every bullet in the body of my wife is a wound in his heart. “So no, I will not give you the satisfaction of hating you.”
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