Running and crying

The NY Times has a lot of first-person accounts.

It was a warm, drizzly Saturday night, and the bars at Borough Market here were packed, as usual. Tucked below an offramp of London Bridge, near the banks of the Thames, the market is a warren of narrow streets populated with trendy bars and restaurants, where some people had just finished watching the Champions League soccer final.

Then came the loud bang of a crashing van. Then came three men slashing at patrons with knives. Then screams, sirens, chaos — and, finally, gunfire as arriving police officers shot the three assailants dead.

“A huge group of people started running towards us,” said Graham Forester, who was in a taxi arriving at Borough Market as the attack unfolded. “One woman screamed at my cabby, telling him to turn around. One guy fell over really badly, while he was running, and I saw a pool of blood on the pavement.

“A group of young girls, dolled up for the night, were running in their high heels, crying.”

That’ll be what the killers wanted. Allah hates women.

“We heard a massive bang,” another witness, Andrew, told the LBC news channel late Saturday night. He had been standing under an umbrella outside a bar when the attackers rushed in. “I turned around on the right, and there was a guy with a big knife, I mean a big knife.”

Andrew said he jumped over a small fence, ran a distance and then hid behind a bush. “There was already a dead guy laying on the floor,” he said. He set out running again, shouting at people to flee. “I told every bar and restaurant on the way: ‘Get out of here! Everybody, out! Out! Out!’”

Helicopters hovered over the Borough Market area as crowds of people continued to evacuate. Witnesses described scenes of horror as ambulances rushed to treat the wounded and people fled in panic.

Les Hunter, 33, was among the crowds that had managed to get away. Mr. Hunter, from Liverpool, was visiting a friend in London and stepped out of a pub about 10:15 p.m. He saw people fleeing and heard gunshots.

“We went back into the pub and people starting running in telling us to get down and hide,” he said. “I ran up to the gents and hid, but when I looked out the window, I saw a guy with blood all over his face and T-shirt.”

Gods hate human beings.

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