- By Doug Faulkner, BBC News
Eyewitnesses have described chaos and horror as they fled a busy Sydney shopping mall where a knifeman killed five people and wounded several others.
“It was insanity,” one visibly upset woman said, as she described seeing a wounded woman lying on the floor.
Crowds were seen fleeing Westfield shopping centre in Bondi in the east of the city as dozens of emergency vehicles responded to the incident.
The attacker was shot dead by a single officer, police said.
He said he followed a policewoman before seeing a man coming towards them armed with a “big blade”.
“He just started floating towards us and all I heard was ‘put it down’ and then she shot him. If she didn’t shoot him well he would have kept going, he was on the rampage.”
He said it looked like the man had been “on a killing spree” and said he saw two bodies, a man and a woman, by a wedding shop.
Another eyewitness told Reuters news agency they saw someone lying down injured and were looking to see what was going on.
“Then we saw all these people running towards us and then we heard a shot and my husband dragged us into the Adairs shop and then we got the lady there trying to lock the doors and then she couldn’t lock the front door so we went in the office which was all locked and then we were in there until the police came to get us.”
Australia’s prime minister said he had been briefed on the incident.
“Tragically, multiple casualties have been reported and the first thoughts of all Australians are with those affected and their loved ones,” he wrote on X.
“Our hearts go out to those injured and we offer our thanks to those caring for them as well as our brave police and first responders.”
Westfield mall is a major shopping centre in the east of Sydney’s central business district and close to the famous Bondi Beach.