Q. What exactly was unfolding in front of you during those two hours?

A. We were with one group of police for most of the time. There were moments when I branched out. If you had to stop, and they continued, you would be in the mall, completely alone, without anyone knowing where these gunmen were. So it was important to make the commitment to stay with them. They moved from place to place, sometimes running, sometimes having to clear areas around corners, where they couldn’t see around the corner, and it looked very much like a military operation inside.
They had two objectives as far as I could see: one was to try to find the militants. And two, to get civilians out of the mall. There were many civilians who had barricaded themselves inside shops, inside the movie theater, inside restaurants, inside a beauty salon — it seemed like everywhere you went, there were more people who just appeared out of the woodwork.