‘People were running over the bodies’: Eyewitnesses tell of terror as truck plunged into crowd

PANIC, fear and a sea of bodies. Eyewitnesses have provided shocking accounts of the moment a truck plunged into a crowd.

Crowds flee the scene of the Bastille Day tragedy in Nice. Source: Twitter

WARNING: Graphic images

GRAPHIC eyewitness accounts of the horrific moment a truck plunged into a crowd of Bastille Day revellers give a chilling picture of the panic, fear and confusion that followed.

At least 77 people are dead after a truck driver slammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in Nice on the French Riviera as they watched a fireworks display for the national day of celebration.

Celebration turned to chaos and horror as the crowd screamed and scattered and the truck mowed down those in its path.

An Egyptian man on holiday in Nice revealed the moment he came face-to-face with the driver of the truck.

Former banker Nader El Shafei told American freelance journalist Linda Hervieux that he walked in front of the truck and waved his arms at the driver.

“He smashed into a lot of people,” Mr El Shafei said.

“I was waving to the driver ‘Stop, there’s a girl under the truck.’

“I saw him pick up a phone, I thought, and at this point I still think it’s an accident and then I see he pulls out a gun. It looked like a handgun, a Glock. He pulled it out and I understood something was wrong ... and then I see the police shooting him.”

He also told the French-based journalist he came to Europe to escape the danger of the Middle East but that “the Middle East can happen anywhere.”

Meanwhile, an English woman walking to the promenade as the truck made its death said people screamed at her in French “but I didn’t understand”.

“Some people were lying on the streets dead and people were running over the bodies,” she said.

A French journalist saw ‘bodies flying like bowling pins and heard “cries I will never forget.’

Wassim Bouhlel, a Nice native, saw a truck drive into the crowd.

“There was carnage on the road,” Bouhlel told AP. “Bodies everywhere.”

Rescue workers help an injured woman to get in an ambulance. Picture: AFP/Valery Hache

The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, was at the waterfront celebration that became a nightmare.

Over a series of Twitter posts he described the scene of devastation: “Dear people of Nice, the driver of a truck seems to have left dozens dead. Stay for now in your home. More info to come.” was his first Tweet.

Later he followed with: “This is the worst drama in the history of Nice with more than 70 victims already.”

Mr Estrosi said “the driver fired on the crowd, according to the police who killed him” and the truck was driven by someone who appeared to have “completely premeditated behaviour”. He added that “the truck was loaded with arms, loaded with grenades”.

A witness talks on his phone as victim of the truck’s deadly charge lies prone in the background. AFP PHOTO / Valery HACHE

AFP correspondent Robert Holloway shielded his face from flying debris as the truck plunged along the beachfront, mowing people down.

“It was about 100 metres from me and I had a few seconds to get out of the way,” he said.

“It was absolute chaos,” Holloway said. “We saw people hit and bits of debris flying around. I had to protect my face from flying debris.”

“For a big truck like that to get actually onto the promenade and then to go in a fairly straight line along there, looked to me like a very deliberate act,”

One eyewitness told BFM TV: “Everyone was calling ‘run, run, run there’s an attack run, run, run’. We heard some shots. We thought they were fireworks because it’s the 14th of July.

“There was great panic. We were running too because we didn’t want to stick around and we went into a hotel to get to safety.”

Another witness named Antoine told a French journalist from newspaper Nice-Matin: “We were at the Neptune beach and a firework display had just finished. That is when we saw a white lorry. It was going quickly at 60-70 kilometres an hour.”

Shock: People embrace in shock after the Bastille Day tragedy. AFP PHOTO / Valery HACHE

Colin Srivastava told BBC News: “We were basically sitting just in front of the Old Town in Nice and saw several hundred people running towards us looking panic stricken.”

“We tried to ask a few of them what the hell was going on and finally got one that said, ‘You need to go, the police have told us to run’.

Zeynep Akar told CNN the crowd was lined up for almost 200 metres along the road, and that the driver went straight through from one end to the other.

She said the wounded had been rushed from the scene, but the dead remained all along the street.

The manager of Le Voilier Plage restaurant in Nice estimated there were between 1000 and 1500 people on the Promenade des Anglais when the truck struck.

“There was an awful panic, people were running everywhere. We provided a refuge for some people, mothers, children. There were people lying on the ground who were injured or worse. There were children in tears.”

Rescue workers at the scene. AFP PHOTO / Valery HACHE