This is the mission that founded the legend of GIGN. In 1976, in Djibouti, 31 French schoolchildren were taken hostage by terrorists. To free them, the elite police will launch a high-risk strategy. In an extract from “Sensitive Affairs”, the man who commanded the intervention unit, Christian Prouteau, recounts this assault… which will not go quite as planned.
Djibouti, February 3, 1976: in the last French colony in Africa, a group of terrorists hijack a school bus to demand the independence of the territory. Thirty-one children aged 5 to 12 are taken hostage. Under the orders of the terrorists, the school bus travels around twenty kilometers to the French border post of Loyada, which separates the enclave from Somalia.
This is the first time that France is faced with a mass hostage-taking, where the lives of dozens of children are at stake. In Paris, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing chooses to use major means. A rescue mission is entrusted to an elite unit created two years previously, the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN), whose men are considered the best shooters in the gendarmerie. If negotiations fail, they will have to neutralize the terrorists.
The GIGN shooters are then “the only ones in the world”, emphasizes Christian Prouteau, who commanded the unit, to practice what they call “simultaneous shooting”. It consists of “have several shooters fire at the same time, in the same second, to be sure that in one second, the objectives are all eliminated at the same time. But this “simultaneous firing” was only tested in exercises, never in operations. The “Loyada mission” will be his baptism of fire.
In the early morning of February 4, six GIGN shooters, arriving during the night, positioned themselves (not without difficulty) so as to have a view of the interior of the school bus parked 200 meters in front of them. Hidden behind rocks and a palm tree, they wait for the right moment to trigger the shot without risking hurting a child.
After several hours of waiting, the tension rises another notch. The terrorists who are detaining the children have just issued this ultimatum: “At 5 p.m., we will slit the throat of one. And then, every hour, we will slit the throat of one.” Among Lieutenant Prouteau’s men, we did not “no doubt about their ability to do it”…
The green light for the operation must be given from Paris by President Giscard d’Estaing. He authorizes the shooting… on one condition: that there is only one hostage taker on the bus. Impossible, according to Christian Prouteau. As the end of the ultimatum approaches, the lieutenant decides to defy the ban.
At 3:42 p.m., the conditions were finally met. The hostages are asleep, the five terrorists present are in the GIGN’s line of sight. For simultaneous firing to be successful, perfect coordination between the gendarmes is required. Here is Christian Prouteau’s method: “When all men are ready, when the equation is perfect, I announce ‘Zero’, and at that moment, each shooter counts in his head ‘Three hundred and thirty-three, three hundred and thirty-three, three hundred and thirty-three’.”
Three crucial seconds, he specifies. Immediately after, “We don’t say ‘Fire!’ as we see in the films, each shooter fires the shot on his own And we only hear one shot, and I see my targets falling. fraction of a second, dead silence. The five terrorists collapsed at the same second. This is the first time in the world that simultaneous firing has been successful in operation.
But just as the GIGN, with the help of legionnaires deployed in Djibouti, is preparing to free the children, bursts tear the silence. From a grove, the Somali army, accomplice of the hostage-takers, responded with machine guns. The soldiers attack the bus, which finds itself caught under a deluge of fire. Terrified, the children took refuge under the seats.
After eight long minutes of panic, they will eventually be evacuated… unharmed, for the most part. The Loyada mission became the founding act of the legend of the GIGN. However, his men remain bruised, because the assault left two dead (a little girl shot dead during the assault and another who died two days later) and eight injured (five children, the bus driver, the social worker who took care of the children and a legionnaire).
Excerpt from “The children hostages of Loyada: France under pressure”, a France Télévisions, France Inter and INA co-production, adapted from a France Inter program, to be seen in “Sensitive Affairs” on November 17, 2024.
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