Here’s how Paris’ night of bloody terror unfolded Friday, minute-by-minute (all times local):
9:17 p.m. : A man with a ticket for an exhibition soccer game between France and Germany tries to enter Stade de France, just north of central Paris, about 15 minutes after the match begins. More than 80,000 spectators are there, including French President François Hollande. Security guards frisk him and find his explosive vest. He backs away and blows himself up in an explosion so loud it is heard inside the stadium. He dies, and one bystander is killed.
9:19 p.m.: A second suicide bomber blows himself up outside the stadium. Again, only the bomber dies and now one is injured. A security detail hustles Hollande out of the stadium, but the match is allowed to continue to avoid a panic.
9:20 p.m.: A car rolls up to Le Petit Cambodge, a Cambodian restaurant in the Canal St. Martin area of northern Paris, about five miles from the stadium.
“We heard huge gunshots and glass coming through the windows,” patron Charlotte Brehaut, who had been dining with a friend, told CNN.
Brehaut and her friend duck as panicked patrons run — some struck down by bullets.
The shots keep flying across the street at Carillon, a bar. “We were listening to music when we heard what we thought were the sounds of firecrackers. A few moments later, it was a scene straight out of a war. Blood everywhere,” one customer told France’s Le Monde newspaper. In all, 15 people are killed at the two restaurants.
9:30 p.m.: The shooters return to their car and drive several blocks to Casa Nostra, a pizzeria.
Again they whip out Kalashnikovs and spray bullets along the restaurant’s dining terrace. Five people are killed, and 20 are wounded.
9:38 p.m.: Gunfire rings out yet again as Alexandra Colineau walks to meet friends for dinner at La Belle Equipe, several blocks west of the Canal St. Martin and near two major train stations, the Gare de l’Est and the Gare du Nord.
“The sound was very loud, and then I realized the back-to-back shots sounded like a Kalashnikov,” Colineau, 35, told the LA Times.
For two or three long minutes, witnesses said, the terrorists fire bullets into the night. When the shooting stops, 19 people are dead at the restaurant.
9:45 p.m.: A suicide bomber blows himself up at a restaurant on Boulevard Voltaire, not far from the Bataclan theater.
One shooter is “like a random guy holding a Kalashnikov. That’s all,” said radio reporter Julien Pearce, who was at the show.
9:49 p.m.: The Bataclan, a concert venue a half-mile south of the initial Paris attacks, is reported as under attack on social media. “Many, many gunshots at the Bataclan,” said one tweet. It is the beginning of a bloody two-hour sequence as a team of attackers invades a show by the American rock band, Eagles of Death Metal.
The Bataclan is a short distance from the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine struck by terrorists in January.
The attackers storm into the theater about 45 minutes into the band’s set and unload their AK-47s on the crowd of 1,500. It’s unclear if these gunmen were the same who attacked the restaurants.
One shooter is “like a random guy holding a Kalashnikov. That’s all,” said radio reporter Julien Pearce, who was at the show.
At least two gunmen “were just standing at the back of the concert room and shooting at us. Like as if we were birds,” Pearce told CNN.
“God is great!” the attackers shout in Arabic.
Pearce urges those around him to play dead. When the shooters stop to reload, he and others run. But Pearce soon finds himself trapped in a room inside the theater.
9:53 p.m.: Back at Stade de France, a third explosion goes off at a McDonald’s. This time, three people are killed.
10 p.m. [approximately]: French journalist Daniel Psenny, who lives near the Bataclan, realizes the firecracker-like sound he hears isn’t coming from the movie on his television.
Psenny peeks outside his apartment window, which overlooks the Bataclan’s emergency exits. There he sees terrified people pouring out into the street. People are running from the theater in fear. Bodies are strewn on the ground.
Video shot Psenny shows bloody victims limping or being dragged away from the theater.
Two women are visible on the exterior of the building, clinging to high windows by their fingers.
“S’il vous S’il vous plaît! S’il vous S’il vous plaît!” one of them cries. “Je suis enceinte!”
Translation: “Please! Please! I am pregnant!”
She is being pulled back inside the concert hall as the video ends. Psenny, meanwhile, runs out into the alley to help victims. He is shot in the arm as he helps drag one of the wounded, an American man, into his building, where they wait for help.
10:05 p.m.: While Pearce and the concertgoers are hiding, the gunfire pauses. Seeing a chance to seek safety, his group makes a run for it.
On the street, Pearce stumbles upon nearly two dozen of the dead and dying. He encounters a teenager shot twice in the leg.
“I grabbed her, and I put her on my back and we ran,” he told CNN.
Many others are trapped inside the concert hall with the terrorists, who begin a standoff with police.
11-11:30 p.m.: Cabbies turned off their meters, giving free rides home to those in need. A citywide curfew takes effect on the streets of Paris — the first in more than 70 years.
The soccer game between the French and German teams ends at the Stade de France, and the crowd spills onto the playing field.
The stadium is briefly locked down before fans are allowed to leave. The German players — who had been threatened that morning in a bomb scare at their hotel — decide to stay in their locker room rather than venture back into the city.
11:50 p.m.: Hollande, back in the Elysée Palace, declares a state of emergency in a televised address.
12:15 a.m.: Hollande convenes a meeting of his Cabinet. The Paris Metro mass transit system is shut down early.
12:30 a.m.: Shortly after the president’s speech, law-enforcement forces storm the Bataclan.
Inside, officers find 89 people have been killed. Two of the gunmen trigger their suicide bombs, killing themselves. A third is shot dead by police.
The rescue operation takes roughly 30 minutes to complete.
1 a.m.: About three hours after the carnage at the concert hall began, audience member Denis Plaud and others who had found haven in a small room in the upstairs of the building are freed by authorities.
The sound of the machine guns was loud enough to shake the walls, Plaud tells CNN.
“There was blood everywhere. Even people alive were covered with blood,” he said. “There was especially on the ground floor a lot of dead bodies and blood, and some people had been alive and had to stay for several hours among dead corpse[s].”