Greg Aldous, from New Zealand, told how he hid in a box and watched a man being gunned down 30ft away from him. He said the terrorists ‘were coming in through the front, they were coming in through the back and we were just sitting ducks’.

He added: ‘These are Islamic fundamentalist nutcases. They just shot and killed anybody. They are horrible.’

He eventually escaped under the cover of darkness to a lorry-loading depot where people were panicking and screaming.

‘My instinct was to hide and I jumped into a large box containing supermarket cartons and hid there,’ he said. ‘I only survived the massacre because I kept out of sight.

‘If they had found me… I’m white, so I’m dead. They’re not even going to think twice. They hate your skin colour.’ Radio presenter Saadia Ahmed was one of the 1,000 who managed to flee. She said: ‘I witnessed a few people get up and say something in Arabic and the gunmen let them go.

‘A colleague of mine said he was Muslim and recited something in Arabic and they let him go as well.’

But she added: ‘I saw a lot of children and elderly people being shot dead. I don’t understand why you would shoot a five-year-old child.

‘They were firing at random at anyone who tried to escape.’