People have described being shot in the back, scrambling to find their children and seeing “bodies all over the floor” amid the horror of the terror attack at Bondi Beach on Sunday.
Two gunmen opened fire during a celebration on the first day of Hanukkah at the popular Sydney beach, killing 15 people, including a 10-year-old child.
Police confirmed the two alleged gunmen were a father and son.
Naveed Akram, 24, remains in hospital under police guard while his 50-year-old father was shot dead during the incident.
Forty-two people have been injured – including two police officers – and are being treated for wounds in hospitals across Sydney.
Chilling witness accounts have emerged as Australia is left reeling from what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned as an anti-Semitic “act of evil”.
A father of two who was at the beach with his wife and children recounted the moment he was hit in the back with shotgun pellets.
“I just ran, grabbed my kids and just ran down to the beach and hid behind the wall. My wife and two other children actually ran a different direction and were hiding somewhere else,” he told the Telegraph.
“It was a very stressful hour. None of us had our phones on us. So until we all managed to put it all back together and and then I was in the surf lifesavers club and I came back down looking for them.
“And there’s bodies all over the floor, like it was not something that you would ever, in a million years, believe that this is Bondi Beach.
“I got a graze in the back, a bit of shrapnel in there. So I just came to the hospital. They dug that all out and bandaged it up for me. But I’m one of the lucky ones. It was just a terrible event for everybody.”
Witnesses said the shooting lasted about 10 minutes, causing people to scatter across the beach in search of safety. About 1000 people attended the Hanukkah event, Police said.
“Initially, you just think, it’s a beautiful day down by the beach,” Bondi resident Grace Mathew told the Independent.
“You sort of think that people are just having a good time. Then more people ran past and said there’s a shooter, there’s a mass shooting, and they’re killing people.”
Parents Wayne and Vanessa recalled the desperate search for their daughter as bullets flew “all around”.
“I don’t know how I didn’t get hit. There were bullets all around me,” Vanessa told Sky News Australia.
“All I can do is scream: ‘Where is my family? Where’s my little girl? Where’s my little girl?’
“I saw her dancing for a second and she was gone.”
The mother of three said a man was shot in front of her as she searched for her child, adding “his brain exploded right next to me”.
Wayne said there was “blood and bodies everywhere” when he saw a lady “lying on top” of his daughter.
The woman was shot in the attack but told Wayne, “I’ve got your daughter, I’ve been protecting her”.
“I said, ‘you’ve saved my daughter’s life’. I said I’ll be indebted to you for the rest of my life,” Wayne said.
A German tourist said they thought they heard fireworks before fearing for their life.
“We were sitting for two minutes, and it just started, the shooting,” Marie told 9 News.
“We thought it was fireworks, but at some point people started screaming and there were the police cars, so we took all our stuff and hid around the corner ... [Then] we took off our shoes and just started running up the street.
“I thought we were going to maybe stay there and die. It was really, really scary.”