Brit families flee water as shark stalks beach at Spain holiday hotspot days after horror Egypt attack

THIS is the dramatic moment bathers try to run to safety through waist-high water as a shark nears the shoreline off a Costa Blanca beach. 

Lifeguards blew on their whistles to warn locals and holidaymakers about the big fish and urge them to get out of the sea as quickly as possible.

The incident happened at Aguamarina Beach in Orihuela Costa, south of Alicante, in Spain, around 10am on Thursday.

It comes days after a tourist was ripped apart by a shark in the Red Sea.

One woman, thought to have been an elderly person seen being helped out of the water by Good Samaritans, is said to have suffered a panic attack after realising the shark was beside her.

Initial reports pointed to it being a tintorera or blue shark about seven-foot long.

Local police were among emergency responders who searched for it without success and it is understood to have swum back out to sea without being seen.

The shark sighting coincided with the start of the lifeguard service at the beach.

A blue shark was blamed for an attack on a holidaymaker in Elche near Alicante in July 2016.

The 40-year-old victim was rushed to hospital and given stitches to a wound in his hand.

First aiders described the bite as “large” and said he had come out of the sea with blood streaming from the injury.

In August 2018 tourists fled the sea in panic after a blue shark, among the most common in Spain, appeared off the packed Majorcan beach of Calas de Majorca on the island’s east coast.

In April a near seven-foot shark also believed to be a tintorera was filmed in the surf on the southeast coast of Majorca at a nearby beach called Cala Llombards. 

The footage of it in shallow water showed it was obviously disorientated.

A Spanish woman watched it as its tell-tale fin appeared above the water’s surface and it headed towards the shoreline in the clear water before nearly beaching on the sand.

She could be overheard saying as it was knocked on its side in the swallow water and thrashed its tail around in a bid to get back out to sea: “This one is going to end up getting stuck here.

“We have to get it out of the water, it’s going to stay where it is.”

Its efforts eventually paid off and it was filmed swimming back out to deeper water before disappearing.

Last week Russian tourist Vladimir Popov, 23, was filmed being attacked by a tiger shark and dragged underwater off the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada.

His body parts were later recovered from inside the predator’s belly after it was clubbed to death by beachgoers.

Three chilling reasons why the tiger shark mauled the swimmer to death have been revealed by experts.

A 37-year-old tourist was also ambushed by a shark at a Red Sea resort in Aqaba, Jordan, in June 2021.

The man was parasailing when he suddenly began to graze the ocean.

A shark then leapt from the water and chomped his leg - and the tourist miraculously managed to not get dragged beneath the water.

He was left brutally bitten and sustained serious injuries from the attack.

In July last year, a tourist was mauled to death by a shark in Sahl Hasheesh, Egypt.