A Muslim man has been hailed a hero after he hid shoppers in the freezer of the Jewish grocery store after an Islamic gunman raided the deli where he worked.
Lassana Bathily, 24, originally from Mali in west Africa, guided terrified customers to safety in a supermarket chiller at the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, Paris, yesterday.
He has since been praised for his quick-thinking and bravery after 15 hostages escaped the ordeal, in which gunman Amedy Coulibaly was killed as he attempted to flee.
Four of the hostages were killed before police stormed the building and ended the terror.
Mr Bathily, who reportedly led six people to safety, told BFMTV: 'When they ran down, I opened the door [of the freezer].
'There are several people who came to me. I turned off the light, I turned off the freezer. When I turned off the cold, I put them [hostages] in, I closed the door, I told them to stay calm.'
Using a goods lift he escaped and was able to give the police valuable information about what was happening inside and where the hostages were hiding.
Shy and reluctant to tell his story he admitted that after the shoot-out many of the customers came to shake his hand and thank him for what he did.
Today his picture – labelled Malian Muslim – has been tweeted around the world as a symbol of the good of people united against terrorism.
One of the shoppers, father-of-four Johan Dorre, 36, was able to call a relative on his phone to tell him they were trapped two floors below the ground floor, where they were being held at gunpoint.
As the siege unfolded his uncle offered words of comfort as he waited behind police barriers with hundreds of anxious residents of the quarter who had been evacuated from their homes.
'Johan and the others were terrified that they would be discovered by the terrorists and were forced to huddle together like frightened animals to avoid hypothermia', another uncle Jacob Katorza told the Daily Mail, just minutes after hearing that his nephew had been freed unharmed.
'He was shopping for the kosher cakes and meat delicacies which we Jewish people enjoy on the holy day when he heard shots being fired above on the ground floor and immediately took cover with other shoppers in the basement.
'Johan was to speak to my brother Haim by phone for only two or three minutes and told him to stay quiet and wait until help arrived.
'Then we just stood at the barriers for five hours and waited for news. It was terrible - the longest five hours of my life.
'We know these people are monsters and would not hesitate to kill Jewish people. They targeted the supermarket because it was run by Jews.
'Thankfully none of his young children were with him when this happened'.
Beside, at the police barrier, stood an elderly relative whose son had also been cowering in the storage room fearful for his life. He too wept with relief as friends told him his son was safe.
'In the past year 7,000 Jews have already left France and after this there will be many thousands more. We are not safe in France any more. There is no future for Jews here in France . We are finished in France.'
Several people have now called for the hero shop assistant, Mr Bathily, to be recognized for his actions as details of the episode emerged.
One tweet from @worldwithjan read: 'A true hero of the hostage crisis in the kosher grocery store yesterday.'
Police are continuing to search for Coulibaly's partner and conspirator Hayat Boumeddiene.
