A “hero” girl saved her younger sister’s life by shielding her from the Southport attacker despite being stabbed in the chest and arm, the inquiry into the atrocity has heard.

The mother of the young siblings, who were both stabbed multiple times, said they showed “a level of bravery that no child should ever need to show” on 29 July last year.

Giving evidence at Liverpool town hall on Tuesday, she described tearfully how her eldest daughter had been stabbed in the chest and arm before the killer turned on her little sister.

She said: “Our eldest tells us that her younger sister wasn’t standing or sitting, she says: ‘Mum, she was crouched, she couldn’t move, her face was pure fear.’

“Our eldest, just a child herself and already injured, dragged her sister in front of her to protect her. She was then stabbed another six times in the back. She says she felt like she was being repeatedly punched from the force.”

They scrambled to escape the Hart Space, where they had been enjoying a Taylor Swift event on the first week of the summer holidays, but became separated in the chaos.

The youngest girl, whose age cannot be reported, ended up on the landing with two other children, one of whom put her hand on the railing of the stairs to help her out. It was then that she was stabbed again in the back.

The inquiry is examining missed opportunities to prevent the killing of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and the attempted murder of 10 others at the Taylor Swift-themed holiday club.

Both girls, who can be identified only as Child C2 and Child C7, survived the attack but now “live with a trauma that no child should carry”, their mother said.

“Our eldest saved her sister’s life that day. Despite her own injuries, she put herself in harm’s way to protect her little sister. And when she woke up in hospital, her very first words were: “Is she OK?” The bond between them is unbreakable.”

The inquiry chair, Sir Adrian Fulford, heard repeated calls from parents of the 26 girls who attended the class to urgently address “systemic failures” that precipitated the attack.

Rudakubana, then 17, was known to a range of specialist services and had been referred three times to Prevent, the counter-radicalisation scheme, before he struck last summer.

“Our daughter was failed. All our daughters were failed. Their innocence stolen,” the mother of one girl, known as Child R, said on Tuesday. “This inquiry must bring about real change. It must lead to reform, accountability and answers. There must be consequences, difficult conversations and decisions that protect our children.”

The inquiry heard how another young girl had allowed other children to rush out of the building before her “because she had already been attacked and didn’t want them to be”.

“She told them to run and not scream – advice she remembered being told when there had been a gas leak at her school,” the girl’s mother said.

Even as the little girl sheltered in a neighbouring house, bleeding profusely from her five stab wounds, she was seen checking on others and comforting them.

“There are so many of these stories of heroism from all of the girls that day,” her mother said. “Stories which show just what warriors they were to face such extreme adversity alone, with only each other to help them through.”

The parents of another child who managed to escape said they lived with the “burden” of the knowledge that the attack “was not inevitable – it was preventable”.

The mother of Child L said their family had been “changed for ever”, their daughter carrying an exhausting weight of fear, guilt, trauma and hyper-vigilance.

“She – along with the others present that day – was targeted by someone who we now know was already known to multiple agencies. That knowledge alone is a burden we carry every day,” her mother said.