A survivor of the Bataclan concert hall massacre has revealed how he escaped being executed by terrorists thanks to his prosthetic leg.

Gregoire Philonenko was at the Eagles of Death Metal concert with his 19-year-old son when he, like many other revellers, thought he heard fireworks going off just before 9pm on Friday night.

"[Then] I saw a person tumble," he told the BBC.

Mr Philonenko said there was a line of bodies lying on the floor and that one of the four gunmen would kick every third person to see if they were still alive.

Gregoire Philonenko. Photo: BBC News

"When they found somebody alive, they execute the person," he said.

When Mr Philonenko realised he was next, he spoke to his son lying next to him.

"I'm a dead man. It's over, d'accord? [OK?], but you don't move, you don't move, for me it is over."

"When the terrorist arrived he touched my leg", said Mr Philonenko. "He just pushed it to see if [I] resisted. "[If I had resisted], it means you are alive and he shoot you."

Mr Philonenko said the gunman tried one more time, but the stiffness of his leg meant the gunman thought he was dead.

"From Saturday to now, I think I don't know why I am still alive, only from my legs."

Eighty-nine people were killed in the concert hall attack on Boulevard Voltaire and many more wounded.

Some of those caught up in the attack have told how they lay silent amongst the dead praying they would not be spotted, while others hid in store cupboards, upstairs rooms and in the cellar.

Mariesha Payne, from Perth in Scotland, was at the Bataclan concert hall with a friend when it was attacked. They survived by running from the scene and hiding in a cellar for three hours.

"It was just a stampede and screaming and gunfire. Nothing felt safe at that moment in time... we just ran to the very back of the cellar and crammed ourselves into the smallest space and just waited in darkness."

Italian businessman Massimiliano Natalucchi, who also attended the Eagles of Death Metal concert on Friday, described how he crawled to safety in between pretending to be dead.

"The first thing we did was to lie on the floor, and slowly, slowly start crawling," he told the ABC's 7.30.

"We were trying to reach a door we'd seen in front of us, about 10 metres away.

"But it was difficult because the terrorists had been shooting for about 15 or 20 minutes non-stop at the beginning.

"So, it was difficult to move. I was just moving when they were shooting in the opposite direction.

"When they were looking at me, where I was, I was pretending to be dead."

After 15 or 20 minutes of crawling he made it to the door and escaped to the first floor, where he hid in a small office with about 50 people.

Meanwhile, a pregnant woman who became symbolic of the horror of the French attacks after being filmed dangling from a second-storey window sill as concert-goers fled 15 metres below, is reportedly "safe and sound".

As terrorists continued to fire inside the theatre, a heroic stranger came out of his own hiding place in an air vent to drag her back into the building.

The woman, who was moments from losing her grip when she was saved, sent a public message searching for her saviour, who has revealed only his first name, Sebastien.

She has not spoken of her ordeal publicly, but her friend, Frans Torreele, told The Telegraph the woman and her unborn child were "safe and sound".

Mr Torreele posted a message on Twitter on Sunday night to find his friend's rescuer.

It was retweeted more than 1800 times before Sebastien's brother responded.



The first message says the woman wants to find the man who saved her life to thank him.

The second says he has been found: "The rest of the story belongs to them. Thank you".

Sebastien, meanwhile, has revealed his own miraculous tale of survival.

Five minutes after saving the pregnant woman, he felt the barrel of a gun against his leg and was captured by the terrorists.

Sebastien told La Province the gunmen were telling hostages to phone television channels and at one point, burned a wad of 50-euro notes.

"They threatened to kill one of us every five minutes and to throw the bodies out of the window. The negotiator got them to agree to let firemen in to take out the injured. Then we waited. Those were the longest minutes of my life," he told La Province.

"I went from hope to feeling resigned to death. I closed my eyes so I couldn't see the Kalashnikov pointed at me. The terrorists had put two hostages as human shields near the doors. The Raid (elite French police unit) managed to shoot past them without hitting them.

"Then they smashed the door in with a battering ram and threw a stun grenade. When I saw a second stun grenade land near my feet, I knew it was time to flee.

"I ran, the grenade exploded and the blast propelled me under the battering ram. All the Raid members went over the top. I was trampled but it was the happiest pain of my life. I was protected. I was alive."