I saw 3 shot dead – bang bang, bang

THESE were the dramatic scenes as the London Bridge suicide squad was cut down in a hail of police gunfire.

Eight officers fired 0 bullets in seconds when they swooped on the men in an eerily deserted Borough Market.

Gabriele Sciotto, 2 , stood yards away as the terrorists collapsed with fatal injuries. As the shots rang out he captured these startling images, obtained exclusively by the Daily Mail, on his iPhone.

Alerted by screaming, the Italian documentary maker walked out of a pub where he had been watching the Champions League final – and saw the killer trio walking towards him wearing what appeared to be gas canisters.

Mr Sciotto said police shouted at the men to ‘get down’ as they tried to separate them from fleeing bystanders.

‘By the time I realised I was going the wrong way home, it happened,’ he said. ‘I went out of the pub and into one of the secondary streets. There were guys running towards me, they kept coming, shouting “run away!” Then I saw three men wearing suicide belts with explosives on. I immediately thought they were fake.

‘They did not look right. The police officers were trying to get them away from the crowd.

‘Everyone was scared and running everywhere. It is the most confusing thing I have ever seen. Then they shot them. I saw three men being shot.’

Mr Sciotto’s photos show armed police from Scotland Yard’s SCO19 unit pointing a range of weaponry at the suspects. Several officers crouched behind a marked BMW X , the vehicle of choice for the capital’s three-man armed response units.

Mr Sciotto said of the terrorists: ‘They were all shot dead in a matter of seconds – bang, bang, bang. They [the police] were very efficient. It was like they were already ready.’

The witness captured the moment unarmed officers in stab-proof vests checked whether the attackers were alive. Another photo shows the face of a dying terrorist, in an Arsenal shirt and combat trousers, a few feet away.

‘It didn’t feel real at the time,’ Mr Sciotto said. ‘I was very stupid to stand there. I only went away when the special forces soldiers arrived.

‘They were wearing all kind of military stuff, but not like soldiers, like you would see on TV. They looked so heavily armed that you knew they must be special forces.’

The witness, from Polistena in southern Italy, added that it will take him weeks to come to terms with what he saw.