Watch Spanish shopping mall ‘evacuate itself’ after terror attack feared

With the recent terror attacks in the U.K. and other areas of Europe, people are understandably nervous. As a fire started in the kitchen of a pizza restaurant in a Fuengirola Shopping Center, sounding the fire alarm, hundreds of shoppers fled in panic, believing a terrorist attack was underway.

Fire in pizza restaurant sparks terror

The incident happened on July 13 in the Miramar Parque shopping center, located in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol in southern Spain. What started as a fire in a pizza restaurant ended with hundreds of people panicking, screaming and running from the shopping center, believing a Terror Attack was underway.

As noted by the Daily Star, the shopping center in the resort of Fuengirola is popular with locals and visitors alike and – with it being summer – it was packed to the hilt with shoppers. However, as reported by the Sun, that soon changed after a loud bang came from a pizza restaurant, leading to shoppers panicking and running for their lives, believing a terrorist attack was ongoing in the center.

Miramar Parque shopping center ‘evacuated itself’

According to the shopping center manager, David del Barrio, a fire in the kitchen of the pizza restaurant had set off the center’s fire alarm.

However, he added that after that alarm sounded, there was no need to evacuate the center, as it practically “evacuated itself.”

Witness captures footage of shoppers running in panic

One witness outside the shopping center filmed the panic as shoppers fled from the scene.

In the footage, people can be seen running across a bridge leading from the center to the road, and along the grass riverbank in front of the shopping center. People could be heard screaming as they ran. The videographer asks someone in Spanish what was happening, to which a woman replied that it was a "bomb scare." The man, relatively calmly, replies, “Ah, a bomb.”

I spoke to Holly Williams, 37, one of the shoppers who fled from the scene.

She was seated at a restaurant in the center and while she didn’t hear the alarm going off, she saw many people running in terror. Believing it to be a terrorist attack, Williams said she didn’t think twice, leaving her bag and baby stroller right there and running with her baby, one-year-old Tristan, in her arms, all the way to the local police station.

Local firefighters later said a fryer in the pizza restaurant had caused the fire, leading to the alarm sounding and resulting widespread panic. The restaurant was damaged along with the floor directly below, but apart from one woman who sprained her ankle in the resulting mayhem, no one was seriously injured.