00:00By 5 o'clock, still no fuel has been delivered to Air France Flight 8969.
00:06The hijackers know the French negotiators are in the control tower.
00:10They decide to send them a message.
00:17One of the terrorists opened the side window of the cockpit and hosed down the control tower.
00:22Glass shattered all around us. We were literally machine gunned.
00:26Since we had landed in Marseille, there had been some moments of tension, but nothing like what seemed to be about to happen.
00:37We're going to succeed in our mission, Captain. Don't worry about that.
00:42Major Favier has been given carte blanche by the French Prime Minister, Édouard Balladour.
00:47He decides the moment has come to act.
00:50When the terrorists started firing with an automatic weapon on the tower, there was danger inside the plane, so we now had justification for an armed attack.
01:00That attack was carried out from the air stairs, which are mobile vehicles.
01:05At that moment, everybody understood, them and us, that it was the beginning of the assault.
01:10The cavalry charge is underway. This is actual footage of the attack.
01:15There are eight of us on the front right air stair.
01:20The first air stair gets to the aircraft.
01:24There's a small problem with the height, as it was a little bit higher than the door.
01:29The door hits the top of the air stair.
01:31A slight step back, the door opens, the air stair touches the plane, and the group goes in.
01:38Then it's the apocalypse.
01:43Get down!
01:45Get down!
01:47Don't move!
01:49And then the group that has gone in comes under a deluge of fire from the terrorists who shoot at everyone who enters.
01:55An extremely murderous fire.
01:57There's not a moment's doubt about the nature of this gunfire.
02:00They are shooting to kill.
02:01At the rear of the plane, the other two squads of Favier's men enter.
02:06Move!
02:06Go!
02:07Go!
02:07Go!
02:07So I hear, hands on your head, don't move, hide, get down as low as you can.
02:14I just wished to escape.
02:21The situation we were in was extremely violent, so I pulled the overcoat I had over my head so I wouldn't see the tracer bullets whizzing past, nor what was going on around.
02:30Hundreds of bullets are whizzing through the air, grenades are exploding, there is smoke and confusion everywhere.
02:38I was in a rather bad spot, so I tried to make myself as small as possible.
02:46You stop breathing, and you imagine that you're hard enough to stop the bullets.
02:50The snipers on the terminal roof can see the terrorists in the cockpit, but frustratingly can't get a clear shot.
02:59The co-pilot is blocking their view.
03:02But that problem is about to be solved.
03:05Actual video footage shows the co-pilot, Jean-Paul Bordurier, falling onto the hard concrete.
03:11Yet he still manages to stagger away to safety.
03:21It gives the snipers the chance they've been waiting for.
03:25The French news footage captures amazing scenes of the battle.
03:29A Xi Xi'an man is blasted out of the plane by gunshots.
03:32The flight engineer and I looked at each other, we knew exactly the situation we were in.
03:43As long as there were gunshots, we knew we could die.
03:45But once it stopped, or when we thought it had stopped, then we said, all right, it's over.
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