Australian caught up in Barcelona, Paris, London attacks

Yahoo – AFP, August 18, 2017

Australian citizen Julia Monaco was in barcelona during the terror attack on
August 17, 2017, and was also in London during the London Bridge attack and
in Paris during the attack outside Notre Dame, but she says that she still plans
to travel Europe (AFP Photo/Josep LAGO)

London (AFP) - An Australian woman who fled in fear from the Barcelona attack has told how she was caught up in two other recent terror incidents in Paris and London during her European travels.

"I was in London at the time of the London Bridge attack, and we were also at Notre Dame the day the attack took place there too," Julia Monaco, a 26-year-old from Melbourne, told BBC Radio 5 Live.

She recounted how she and her friends took refuge inside a shop as crowds ran from a vehicle as it ploughed through pedestrians on the famous Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona on Thursday afternoon.

"One minute everything was fine, and the next it was absolute pandemonium. Everyone just started screaming and running, being told to get away from the windows," she said.

They lay on the ground, without knowing what was going on, before they were eventually allowed to leave and walked back to their hostel.

It was the third time Monaco, who is travelling around Europe this summer, found herself caught up in a terror attack.

She told Australian radio station 3AW that she was "locked down on the Tube" on June 3 during a vehicular and knife attack at London Bridge, which left eight people dead.

Three days later, she was in Paris when a 40-year-old Algerian doctorate student who had pledged allegiance to IS attacked a policeman with a hammer outside Notre Dame cathedral.

"I'm not coming home, these thugs are not going to stop me," Monaco told 3AW, adding: "I still want to travel the world, maybe there is something wrong with me, but I am still going."