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"Panic and dread" gripped Saturday night revellers as the London terror attack unfolded, says Australian federal senator Sam Dastyari, who is in the British capital.
Senator Dastyari was "having a quiet meal" in a restaurant in Borough, near London Bridge, as attackers ploughed a van into crowds on the bridge and then got out and stabbed bystanders, before targeting people in nearby restaurants and bars.
"We heard screaming — You could obviously tell there was an incident and someone starts running past, obviously covered in blood, kind of down the street," Senator Dastyari told ABC News.
"It takes you a moment to register whether or not obviously if it's a bar fight gone wrong or that kind of thing — you don't know whether it's anything more serious than that.
"The restaurants started to go into lockdown.
"There was a real sense of panic and dread that obviously runs through in these kind of scenarios."
When UK politician Richard Angell posted a tweet saying some of the stabbings reportedly took place in a restaurant next door to where he had been dining, Senator Dastyari responded: "Oh God. That explains the screams".
Mr Angell later tweeted: "Five hours after it all started @samdastyari and I are finally home. Never been so pleased to see my flat."
Senator Dastyari told ABC News police had swept into the restaurant where he was eating and moved the diners upstairs to safety.
However with little information, he said the diners were scared and unsure what was happening in the city around them.
"In these scenarios, no-one has any information, right? Everyone's running off the same tidbits — someone got a text from someone, someone saw something, someone saw something said on Twitter.
"There's no point pussyfooting around it in these kind of scenarios — people are afraid.
"There's a real lack of information. That's obviously natural.
"But the police — the number of armed police that appeared in a very, very short period to lock down the area — obviously demonstrated that they were treating it as a very, very serious incident.
Senator Dastyari said he had spoken to London Mayor Sadiq Kahn about terrorism earlier in the day.
"I asked him what was one thing he found the toughest or most surprising [about his job]," Senator Dastyari said.
"We had a general chat. Sadiq said to me, 'The reality of being mayor is you have to be ready for these types of incidents now. They happen'."
"Just having had that conversation with him, you know, at 2:00pm today, and by 9:00pm, sitting in a restaurant and watching it unfold, brings home the reality of the world that we now live in."
Topics: terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, united-kingdom, england
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