Eagles of Death Metal safe, but crew member reportedly killed and another shot

Eagles of Death Metal were playing the Paris concert hall where terrorists took hostages and then killed at least 100 people. Photo / Getty Images

The Bataclan theatre in Paris was crammed with more than 1000 people who had come to see a sold-out show by the US rock band Eagles of Death Metal.

Gunmen burst into the crowd and started firing indiscriminately, killing at least 100 people. At least two attackers were reported killed by security forces.

The incident was one of several seemingly coordinated attacks around the city Friday evening.

"It looked like a battlefield, there was blood everywhere, there were bodies everywhere," one survivor told the Guardian after being freed from the Bataclan. "Everyone scrabbled to the ground. . . . At first we kept quiet. I don't know how long we stayed like that, it seemed like an eternity."

Eagles of Death Metal fans awaited word of their fate. All were safe, according to those close to the band.

However, the LA Times reported that one person working with the band that was killed, "according to people with knowledge of the situation", and that another was shot.

David Ian Hughes, brother of frontman Jesse Hughes, posted on Facebook: "The band is OK. I hold out hope that as many people as possible make it out OK, as well. As the situation is still developing, I cannot say much else."

The wife of the Eagles of Death Metal's drummer Julian Dorio told the Washington Post that the band was safe.

The band's management had posted a message on the band's Facebook page saying that they were still trying to account for the whereabouts of all members and crew.

The message said: "We are still currently trying to determine the safety and whereabouts of all our band and crew. Our thoughts are with all of the people involved in this tragic situation."

Michael Dorio, brother of the band's drummer, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution: "They saw a man with a machine gun just opening fire."

He said his brother told him band members hit the floor when they spotted the gunmen, then ran out a backstage door.

They dashed to a nearby police station, where Julian Dorio borrowed someone's cellphone to call his family in Atlanta, Michael Dorio said.

The band were in Paris for the first stop of their 25-date tour of Europe and Scandinavia when the attacks occurred.

Josh Homme, one of the founders of the band and the leader of another popular group, Queens of the Stone Age, was not performing in Paris with Eagles of Death Metal, according to a publicist for the Eagles' record label.

The band, formed in 1998 in Palm Desert, California, was celebrating the October release of "Zipper Down" with a European tour. It's their first album in seven years.