Former Liverpool player Anthony Le Tallec has given a harrowing account of the Annecy playground attack today as he was caught up in the brutal incident that saw four children knifed.
Witnessing the rampage earlier, Le Tallec, 38, told how he had to scream at police to shoot the knifeman as he watched an elderly man get stabbed before officers opened fire.
The former journeyman footballer filmed the horrific scenes as a Syrian refugee ran riot stabbing children in the French Alps. He later gave his account over Instagram.
Le Tallec, who also played for local side FC Annecy, said he realised something was wrong as he was jogging around the pristine waters of Lake Annecy in the foothills of the Alps and a wave of panicked bystanders rushed past in the opposite direction.
As the group tried to flee the frenzied attack, Le Tallec said one mother screamed at him to turn and run.
''There's someone stabbing everyone along the lakeshore. He's knifed children,'' Le Tallec quoted the woman as screaming at him as he gave a video account of what he saw over Instagram.
Le Tallec said he 'was so surprised' that he kept jogging through the park in the town of Annecy.
'Then suddenly the guy appeared in front of me,' Le Tallec recalled. 'Then I saw the police who were ten metres behind him but they hadn't managed to get him yet. He was so near to me so I got out of the way.'
'I see that he's heading straight for a group of elderly men and women. He attacks one grandpa, stabs him once, the cops can't catch him, so I tell the cops, 'shoot him',' Le Tallec continued.
'Then they start shooting, they shoot at the person, right in front of me, and he falls to the ground.'
The former Red added: 'After I continued on my way then I saw in front of the lake, children on the ground - so very sad. But the police, the slowness, that's what I noticed, the slowness was incredible, the slowness to trigger something (shoot). The guy had the time to stab the dad twice.
'He spoke English. At the beginning, we all thought it was staged, but with the cries of people, we realised it was reality.'
A spokesman for the national police force said the alleged assailant in Thursday's attack was a 31-year-old Syrian asylum seeker who carried Swedish identity documents and a Swedish driving license.
Identified as Abdalmash H, the attacker was heard shouting 'in the name of Jesus Christ' as he clinched to a necklace that reportedly had a crucifix on it before unleashing his stabbing rampage.
A chilling video of the attack shows the assailant jump a low wall fence into a children's playground and repeatedly lunge at a child's stroller, pushing aside a woman who tries to fend him off.
The children who were wounded in the attack were aged between 22 months and three years.
Le Paquier park where the attack took place is popular with locals and tourists who swarm to Annecy in summer to boat on the lake's turquoise waters and hike in the nearby forested mountains.
At least one of the wounded children was in a stroller, eyewitnesses said. One person who saw the attack, who gave his name as Ferdinand, told BFM TV: '(He) went towards the strollers, repeatedly hitting the little ones with a knife.'
Dominique Griziaux said he was at the nearby 'Pop Beach' when the wail of sirens filled the air. The attack had left him feeling sick inside.
'You put yourself in the place of parents and grandparents put through this drama,' said Griziaux, an Annecy resident, adding that an attack on such young children was 'just unthinkable'.
'You'd never think this could be possible in such a peaceful, bucolic environment as Annecy.'