First person:  "I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone."  "We are simply farmers. Why are the terrorists so cruel? " moaned a woman named Chen, with the blood-stained ID card of her husband in her shaking hands.

Ang Jie, manager of Dicos restaurant near the railway station told China Daily reporter, "After the attack, many passengers swarmed into our restaurant. We opened the door to receive the passengers and passers-by until the store was fully crowded.”

The owner of a mobile phone shop took in more than 10 passengers who escaped from the rail station. The owner locked the shop from the inside and prepared to fight off attackers with the fire extinguishers. From behind the glass door, he saw one terrorist pointing at crowds with his knives, Beijing News reported.

"The terrorists attacked everybody they ran into with the long knifes, even old people and kids!" a passenger told China News Agency.

"We ran at once when we saw those thugs, but my mom was tripped by a chair [and fell]. My dad tried to help her, but a man stabbed her right in the throat with a knife..."

Wang Dezhu, one of companions of a 61-year-old victim, said a group of migrant workers wielded hookahs – long, bamboo water pipes used in rural areas - to protect themselves. (click here to read more)

Tobias Schindler, 23, a German tourist on the scene of the attack told a China Daily reporter, "We wanted to take the train at 11pm to Dali. We walked to the train station and we saw one guy [who was] really bloody. [Then] everybody just started running, running, running. We just followed them. Some of them went to small shops and we followed them. Then they locked everything and turned lights on. We went to a dark corner where nobody could see us. And then we came out, trying to figure out what was going on."

Three German tourists recounted the horror to a China Daily reporter. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]