"Then we saw blood..": horror over live fire shooting
CARCASSONNE, France (AFP) — By the time the frantic call of "cease fire" rang out, 17 people lay shot and wounded as a fun family day out to watch a military drill turned into a bloodbath.
"Suddenly, people were falling, we thought it was part of the exercise, and then we saw blood," said one of the hundreds of visitors who watched as a French soldier fired live rounds instead of blanks at visitors attending a hostage-taking demonstration.
Five children were among those injured at the drill near Carcassonne in southwestern France.
Immediately after the shots were fired, said the eyewitness, a middle-aged man who asked not to be named, "an official shouted out over the loudspeakers "Cease fire!".
"We were watching a hostage-taking exercise and it happened when there was only about five minutes to go. There were seven or eight soldiers with guns, with one of them in the middle of the public pretending to be a terrorist," said the man, who attended the event with his family.
"We saw a child of about three years, really messed up, that really struck us. There were loads of children, because it was a party for children above all," he said.
"Everybody ran for the exits. It (the evacuation) was very well organised, the soldiers handled it very well," he said.
A senior army officer insisted that the incident was almost certainly the result of an "unintentional" error.
Fifteen civilians were injured along with two soldiers.
A young woman who was at the event at the army base and who also asked not be named, said she heard screams from the part of the barracks where the demonstration was taking part.
"There were people lying on the ground, among them a a little girl, maybe two or three years old. One of her family was running around looking for help," she said.
Military and civilian investigators have opened probes into the events at the Third Marine Parachute Regiment barracks.
Defence Minister Herve Morin said that the shooter had first fired a magazine of blanks and then loaded a fresh magazine but this time with live bullets.
"Why did he have it in his pocket?" he asked.
He said an experienced soldier would not confuse blanks and real bullets, noting that the two munitions are packed into different-coloured magazines.
The soldier, a sergeant described as experienced with no history of behavioural or psychological problems, was detained following the incident.
