Video shows nurse giving suicide bomber CPR at Paris café after failed attack

The attacker did not kill anyone but himself when his bomb failed to fully explode

A Paris nurse began resuscitating a man after the terrorist attacks before realising he was one of the suicide bombers.

David, who asked to be called by his first name, was in the Comptoir Voltair cafe near to the Stade de France when an explosion shook the cafe.

The 46-year-old trained nurse thought it was a gas explosion, little realising that a suicide bomber by the name of Brahim Abdeslam had detonated explosives after entering the room full of people.

He approached the apparently unconscious man and began administering CPR - before realising what was beneath his shirt.

"There were wires - one white, one black, one red and one orange. Four different colours," he told Reuters. "I knew he was a suicide bomber."

A woman stops to look at flowers, candles and messages in tribute to victims in front of the Comptoir Voltaire cafe, one of the sites of the deadly attacks in Paris, France, November 17, 2015. (Reuters)

Abdeslam was one of the eight terrorists who carried out a series of co-ordinated attacks which left 130 people dead and many more wounded.

Abdeslam later died, while his brother Salah, who drove two of the gunmen to their drop-off points near the 10th and 11th arrondissement, is now on the run.

David quickly realised that the Comptoir Voltair café had not been in a gas explosion at all but a terrorist attack of some kind.

"He had a large opening on his side, about 30 cm," he said. "When you lift a t-shirt and you see wires, you know that's not normal.

"The first wire I saw was red. I think that was the detonator," said David. "There was something at the end."

When the fire services arrived the nurse, who works at a Paris hospital, told them what he had seen so they could evacuate the cafe.

No one other than Abdeslam was killed because his bomb had not fully exploded.

David had been having dinner with a friend on Friday 13 November when the explosion happened as the waitress brought over the dishes.

"I was thinking about how I lay him on the floor, with me doing CPR. It's a pretty vigorous process," he said.

"By just doing that, I also could have gone."