Bermudian Joanne Ball-Burgess spent hours hiding from terrorists who raided a Nairobi shopping mall before escaping in a desperate sprint for freedom.Speaking to The Royal Gazette, the mother of two said: “All I could think about was my kids. I needed to get out of here for my kids.”The attack, which has been linked to the Somali al-Shabab movement, began on Saturday when militants entered the upscale Westgate Mall, throwing grenades and opening fire on shoppers.As of last night between ten and 15 militants were locked in a tense standoff with the Kenyan military while an unknown number of civilians remained inside, either being held as hostages or still hiding. At least 68 people have been confirmed dead.Mrs Ball-Burgess, who has lived in Kenya with her husband and two sons for the last two years, said she had gone to the mall to visit an ATM machine, and then went to use the bathroom.“As I was walking out of the bathroom the gunshots were right there,” she said. “There were people screaming. Someone shouted to go back into the bathroom.”She said she, and seven others ran into the bathroom and locked themselves in the stalls, where they remained for more than three hours as gunshots continued to ring out.She used her phone to call her husband, who was at a football game with their two sons, trying to explain, in a whisper, what was happening. She also used the phone to send a tweet reading: “There’s a shooting at westgate. Hiding. Someone call police and the bomb squad.”“For the first hour, it was just very surreal,” she said. “I kept thinking that someone was going to jump out and say it was all some sort of joke, but that just didn’t happen.“I was in a stall with two other women, and one of them got a text message from her oldest son saying his younger brother had been shot in the head and wasn’t waking up, that grandma also got shot. Even then, I thought somehow, maybe, they were going to be all right. I was in shock.“She [thre other woman] started to say she wanted to go out there, that she didn’t care if she died anymore. I asked her if she had any other family, and when she said she did, I told her she had to make it out for the rest of her family.”Mrs Ball-Burgess said she again attempted to contact friends and family, but her phone had lost its charge.Over the course of the next few hours, she said she considered attempting to escape through the ceiling, but abandoned the idea because the ceiling tiles were too weak. She also wrote the phone number of her husband on the leg of her trousers in case she didn’t make it.After three-and-a-half hours of waiting, Mrs Ball-Burgess said the group were forced into action when smoke began to pour into the bathroom.“It smelled like burning rubber,” she said. “I thought it must have been a fire. The eight of us decided that we were going to make a run for it. We knew there was a back door. If we died, we died. We just had do it.”Mrs Ball-Burgess said the group ran from the bathroom, but when gunshots rang out again, she and others diverted into a cleaning closet.“I thought about jumping over the veranda, but looked down and realised I would break both of my legs,” she said. “I saw five more people running out from somewhere. They were throwing up and crying.“We ran and hid in the closet for about five minutes. We had no idea where the terrorists where, but we all decided together that we were going to run out to the fire exit. If we died, we died.“We all ran out together with our hands in the air. I didn’t know if some one was going to shoot me in the back. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”She and the others sprinted out of the building towards the police and soldiers that had surrounded the mall. As soon as she reached them, Mrs Ball-Burgess said she collapsed.“It was at that point I really broke down and it started to sink in what actually happened,” she said.She and the others were taken to a Hindu temple, where she was able to contact her family and tell them she was all right. Despite the ordeal, she said she and her family are holding up well in the aftermath of the attack.Her husband, Quincy Burgess, said he struggled to maintain his calm while the incident was ongoing to prevent their children from knowing.“I had to juggle everything,” he said. “I couldn’t let the boys know, but at the same time I wondering what I could do. I wanted to go there and find out what the situation was. All of these horrible thoughts were running through my head. You just don’t know what to think.”Her father Edward Ball said in the middle of the incident he received a phone call from one of his daughter’s friends who had seen her online messages.“After that, I was just switching back and forth from BBC to CNN,” he said. “It was horrible hearing them give the updates on the casualties. I just didn’t know what was happening, or if she was all right. Fortunately Quincy sent me an e-mail saying she was all right, but shaken up.”