A 14-year-old girl who was stabbed in the Southport attacks has told a public inquiry how the eyes of the killer “didn’t look human”.

The teenager, whose anonymity has been protected, fought back tears as she described how her little sister “lost her best friend” – Alice Aguiar – in the murders last July.

The girl was stabbed in the arm and the back when Axel Rudakubana, then 17, marauded through a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in the Merseyside town.

Giving evidence to the Southport Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall, the girl, who was 13 at the time, described how her attacker still appears in her nightmares, with the screams and images from that day playing in her mind “like a horror film on repeat”.

Alice, nine; Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and six-year-old Bebe King were murdered while eight other children and two adults were seriously wounded when the knifeman began “systematically” stabbing them.

The inquiry is hearing evidence from survivors of the attack and their families as part of its first phase, which will examine the killer’s history and contact with various agencies including any “missed opportunities”.

The girl, referred to by the inquiry as child C6, delivered her statement clearly but paused occasionally to gather herself when she became upset.

She began by tearfully telling the silent room she “cannot imagine the pain” of the parents of Alice, Elsie and Bebe.

“I think of them all often, especially Alice, who was such a good friend to my sister, my entire family miss her,” she said.

After her solicitor asked if she was ok to continue, C6 moved on to the moment the “day of laughter and excitement” turned into a “living nightmare”.

She said she was facing the door of the studio, in Southport’s Hart Spaces building on Hart Street, when he walked into the room.

“I saw him in his green hoody, with the face-mask on and I looked at his eyes,” she said.

“He looked possessed. He didn’t look human. I saw him stab someone in front of me and realised that he was going to hurt us all.”

Child C6 said the attacker then turned towards her and “everything slowed down”.

The inquiry heard how she was stabbed in the arm and then in the back as she tried to run.

Despite her injuries she was able to scream for the younger children to get down the stairs, and said she remembered “physically pushing” some of them out of the building.

The inquiry heard at that stage she did not know where her younger sister was.

“I will never forget the fear, the panic or the way I felt wondering if we were going to survive,” she said.

Child C6 suffered a collapsed lung and two broken bones in her back and was rushed for emergency surgery even before her parents could get to see her in hospital.

She told the inquiry she is now “better than she was” but struggles with her core strength and stamina, as well as battling the symptoms of deep psychological trauma.

She said she felt like her “passion” for dance had been lost, but she had “tried not to let him take that from me” and is slowly “learning to love” dancing again.

C6 told the inquiry she now feels “different” to everybody else, including some other survivors, and recovery is “lonely”.

“I feel under so much pressure, like I am stuck between two worlds,” she said.

“I don’t fit with the adults there that day, or with those younger than me. I am somewhere in the middle.”

C6 said the inquiry “has to tell us why this happened” and find out why the attacker “was not stopped”.

“Why did the agencies involved not speak to each other?” she asked.

“How many others are out there like him? This can’t happen again.”

Inquiry chairman Sir Adrian Fulford praised the girl for her contribution, telling her: “Very well and bravely done.”

Earlier the parents of two children who survived the attack without physical injuries, referred to as child V and child W, described how their girls initially believed a man had come into the studio with “a fake knife and fake blood”.

The youngest told their mother: “Mummy, he didn’t knock on the door, he didn’t ask to come in and nobody wanted him there.”

Their father, his voice breaking with emotion, told the inquiry: “This Inquiry matters.

“It matters for our children, and for every child who was there that day. It matters for every parent who has sat up at night, terrified, knowing how close they came to losing their child.

“And it matters for those who did lose their children, who we think about and carry in our hearts every single day.”