'I just kept running': Clare man caught up in Sydney stabbing attack shares harrowing experience

A county Clare man who was caught up in the Sydney stabbing attacks described the "huge panic" he felt as he hid from the attacker.

A knife attacker killed six people and injured several others in a stabbing spree at a Sydney shopping centre before being shot dead by police.

Niall Naughton, who is living in Sydney, was in the Bondi Junction Westfield shopping centre when the stabbings took place earlier this Saturday, April 13.

He was in a dressing room when someone "pulled back my curtain and said 'Get out, get out, get out. You need to go…there’s stabbing, someone’s stabbing’."

Niall told RTÉ's Saturday with Colm O'Mongain that he hid with staff and other shoppers in the shop's basement.

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"Everyone was in such a state of panic. Everyone was in such distress and overwhelmed, everyone was screaming and crying. It wasn’t a very calm situation. It was just horrific," he shared.

"I couldn’t even reach for my phone at this stage cos there was so many of us crammed into the room."

He and the other customers escaped through an emergency door from the basement outside at the back of the shopping centre.

"I could see hundreds and hundreds of people coming running across the road. I just kept running. That's all I could do was run as far away from the shopping centre as I could."

He said that the incident had "properly shook me to the core" but that he was being looked after by a good group of friends.

The lone knifeman attacked shoppers on Saturday afternoon at the Westfield shopping centre in the suburb of Bondi Junction in eastern Sydney.

A female New South Wales Police inspector confronted the attacker on her own and shot him dead as he raised a knife and lunged at her.

NSW police said they had identified the attacker as a 40-year-old man who was known to them, but added that they do not think he was motivated by terrorism.

Four women and a man died in the shopping centre and another woman later died in hospital, police said.

A nine-month-old infant has undergone surgery and eight people, including the child, are in hospitals around Sydney receiving treatment for “different injuries”.

Reports have suggested the woman who died in hospital is the child’s mother.

Additional reporting by PA