Paris attacks: Survivors voice deep feelings of 'shame and guilt'

Simply by staying alive, hundreds of people wounded in the attacks are defying the Isis extremists who sought to kill them

Members of the public gather to lay flowers and light candles at La Belle Equipe (Getty )

One bullet tore into Amandine Andretto’s right leg, shattering her tibia. Another hit her in the arm. For three interminable hours, her parents didn’t know if she was among the dozens massacred at the Bataclan concert hall.

Finally, as rescue services rushed her to a treatment centre, her mother reached her on the phone.

The 32-year-old lawyer is lucky to be alive, felled by the jihadists’ first sprays of gunfire in the concert attack, but then saved by three officers from an elite police unit who dragged her out of the hall during the subsequent hostage-taking.

It will be at least three months before she can even begin the process of starting to walk again. “It is going to be long,” her father Jean-Pierre Andretto said. “She has two or three more surgeries.”

Simply by staying alive, hundreds of people wounded in the Paris attacks are defying the Isis extremists who sought to kill them. Yet that defiance comes at an enormous price.

Some were in cardiac arrest when they were evacuated to Paris hospitals but now look as if they will pull through. Scores more with no visible physical scars are haunted by what they saw or did to survive France’s worst attack in decades.

For those with smashed spines and other devastating wounds, the months and years ahead could be a daily battle. In many cases, the high-velocity rounds fired at close range and exploding suicide belts packed with shrapnel did lasting damage.

By the French health ministry’s most recent count, dozens of people were still hospitalised, a number in critical condition and 41 in intensive care. More than 350 people were wounded along with the 130 killed, French officials said.

Many of the wounded, like Ms Andretto, many face more operations in the future. An off-duty police chief from Normandy took a bullet in the back at the Bataclan that hit his spine, according to his town’s mayor, Marc-Antoine Jamet. The officer was evacuated to one of the two military hospitals in Paris that, because of their experience with battlefield wounds, took in nearly 20 per cent of the most critically injured casualties.

Those with wounds to arms, legs and joints face “very long” periods of rehabilitation and some will be likely be permanently disabled, said Vincent Duverger, a surgeon at the Bégin military hospital in Paris. The hospital had five operating rooms working around the clock to treat 41 casualties from the attack.

Laurent Martinez, a military psychologist, said many others are grappling with the “invisible” injuries of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety and other psychological disorders that can last for years. These victims could include not just those who survived the attacks but also emergency workers.

Mr Martinez said all the Paris attacks survivors he has treated so far have voiced deep feelings of “shame and guilt” because they’re still alive when so many others died.

“There were really horrible scenes,” he said. “People told us they had to crush people, walk on them to escape. All that provokes unbearable feelings of shame.”

Associated Press