"We saw a lot of ugly things, people lying down"

Nine-year-old Oday Shanah, whose mother emigrated from war-torn Gaza and settled in Southern California two decades ago, was among dozens of children forced to huddle in classrooms on Monday when deadly gunfire rang out at the mosque where they attend school.

In an interview a few hours after the shooting, which occurred late in the morning at the Islamic Center of San Diego, Shanah said he heard a burst of gunfire coming from outside, beyond the walls of the complex that also houses an Islamic day school.

Shanah said he and his classmates were quickly ushered into a closet, where they huddled together, trembling with fear as 12 to 16 more shots rang out. At one point, after the shooting stopped, they heard SWAT officers outside the classroom yelling, “Okay, open up,” and then they opened the door, the boy said.

As the police officers led them out of the building, “we saw a lot of ugly things, people lying down and yes, ugly things,” Shanah said.

"My legs were shaking, my hands were shaking, and my head was hurting a lot. I felt like a rock," he said.

Police said three men linked to the Islamic Center, including a security guard credited by authorities with preventing further bloodshed, were killed outside the mosque. They were shot by two teenage suspects in the attack, who then committed suicide a few blocks away.

Emerging from hiding after the shooting stopped, Shanah said he saw police breaking down the door of an adjacent classroom, apparently as SWAT teams advanced through the building, room by room.

"They told us to raise our hands and stand in a big line," the boy said, adding that he saw a group of younger students forming a second line for evacuation, before he and his classmates were escorted through the complex to the exit.

The gunmen did not enter the mosque complex, and all students at the school, known as Bright Horizon Academy, are safe, authorities later said.

The armed violence that rocked the Islamic Center and the tight-knit surrounding community must have been particularly shocking for Shanah's mother, who fled Gaza for the United States in 2006, a year of months of fighting between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants in the coastal enclave. His father immigrated to the United States from Jordan in 2015.