Tom Joyner
BBC World Service

AFP via Getty Images

A student says he and his friends had arrived at Le Constellation bar after finishing work nearby, hoping to join in the New Year’s celebrations. But as they parked and approached the door, they noticed something wasn’t right.

“People started running outside, smoking and burned,” the student, who asked not to be named, tells OS on the BBC World Service.

“For the first five minutes, I was just standing there. I didn't understand what was going on.”

Around them was unfolding a scene of chaos. Over the next two-and-a-half hours, they threw themselves into providing help.

The student rushed to a nearby restaurant, where the manager had ushered in some of the injured to offer them water until ambulances arrived.

“Everywhere hurts”, one of them told the student, he recalls.

“Some of them were just shouting. Just shouting. Nothing else. Some of them didn't say anything, they were just lying on the floor.”

The group of friends helped one badly burned woman into their car and rushed her to hospital in nearby Sion. Today, they await news of her condition.

“I feel still a bit shocked,” the student tells me. “I cannot believe what happened.”