An Australian couple who witnessed the horrifying Nice attack have described how they told their children the sound of gunshots was just fireworks.
Melbourne parents Danae and Sasha Goldsmith, who work in the wine industry, were in the southern French city with their two daughters when the terror attack occurred on 14 July.
The family had just finished watching the Bastille Day fireworks from the balcony of their Airbnb apartment when the carnage unfolded.
For current updates on the Nice attack, see this post.
“The fireworks were going on and they were all lovely … there were thousands of people on the streets,” Ms Goldsmith told The Age.
“We weren’t going to go down into the crowds because my little girls being too little.”
When the celebratory fireworks finished about 11pm, the family went inside to pack for their next flight.
"[T]hen it went a bit quiet, a bit eerie. I just noticed 'what? why has all the music stopped?'," Ms Goldsmith told The Age.
"And then a truck was coming down the promenade and I thought 'that's weird, there's no cars allowed because of the celebrations'.
"Then I realised what the truck was doing."
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Ms Goldsmith described the terrifying moment the 25-tonne lorry accelerated through the crowd of thousands, deliberately running down dozens of revellers.
"Everyone was scrambling, like little ants running away from something," she told The Age.
"I saw the people get mowed down, and the truck stopped just outside our apartment."
As gunshots continued to sound outside -- presumably the shoot-out between the attacker and policeman that ended with the terrorist's death -- the family sat with heads bowed.
Ms Goldsmith ultimately told her daughters, aged five and seven, that the loud sounds had been a fireworks incident.
She put them to bed, not wanting to expose them to the bloodshed unfolding immediately outside their apartment block.
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