A YORK woman has told of how she was caught up in the panicked aftermath of the terrorist attack in France.

Holly Blackburn, 18, watched the Bastille Day firework celebration near the promenade in Nice and had wanted to go closer to the beach to take photographs, but her boyfriend Will Clarke, 18, persuaded her to leave ahead of the crowds.

Moments later, terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove through the crowd in an attack that killed 84 people and has left many others in a critical condition in hospital.

Holly, who has just finished sixth form at Huntington School, is now back home in York, and told The Press: “We left at 10:25pm and I believe the attack began at half past.

“We were looking around a market which was just off the promenade, then all of a sudden lots of people started screaming and running and we didn’t know what was happening. The police were driving behind the crowds on motor bikes. My boyfriend grabbed me and pushed me into the closest restaurant. We then ran straight to the back of the restaurant into where the chef was cooking with around 20 or 30 others.”

Restaurant staff locked up the restaurant and monitored the entrances on CCTV, with a barman telling them they thought someone had a gun.

When they were told it was safe to leave, the couple ran two miles back to their hotel.

“I was shaking and very confused,” Holly said, “My boyfriend managed to act calm so that I wasn’t even more scared. When everyone was running away the door of the restaurant also got smashed which made us more scared and confused. The streets were just full of people running and trying their best to get away from it all.”

When they arrived at the hotel, Holly said she got an anxious phone call from her parents, who were relieved to hear they were unharmed.

The following day, Holly said the streets were almost silent, in sharp contrast to the celebratory, family atmosphere of the day before.

The couple visited the makeshift memorial to the victims. “There was still crowds around the memorial and people were placing flowers, teddies and candles. We also lit a candle in memory of everyone killed in the attack. However, when we were at the promenade on the Saturday there were still many patches of blood that had stained the floor.”

She said: “A week later, I still feel so sad for all the families and people who were not as lucky as us and lost loved ones because it really could so easily have been us. I also feel quite scared still and don’t think I will want to go in a crowd again for a while. I also feel that France need to do much more in preventing terrorism especially after all the evidence which has since been found about how the attacker had been looking at sites related to ISIS and radicalism. However, on the night and in the days after I was very impressed with the emergency services and they really did do the best they could do in the situation they were in.”

Holly said she and Will, also a former Huntington School pupil and who now works for Jaguar, were moved by the acts of kindness they witnessed following the attacks.

“At the memorial, there were many police handing tissues to anyone crying and there were also people handing out water to anyone who needed I which I thought was very kind,” she said. “I was also very grateful to the restaurant owners who let us take shelter in the restaurant and locked the doors in order to try keep us as safe as possible.”