MAYVILLE, NY — Witnesses to the attempt on author Salman Rushdie’s life recalled the bloody horror on the first day of accused knifeman Hadi Matar’s trial – and described fearing a second attacker was going to blow up the lecture hall where the novelist was assaulted.

“I can see blood, I can see them piled on,” said Deborah Moore Kushmaul, the chief program officer at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York who was greeting guests at the Rushdie lecture in August 2022 when she heard a “commotion” coming from the stage.

“I can see that our audience, many of them who are elderly, were screaming. Many were rushing onto stage,” Kushmaul said in the Chautauqua County Courthouse Monday. “I knew that something terrible had happened. I didn’t know if someone died or not but I saw all the blood.”

When she realized somebody had attacked Rushdie – a well-known danger he’s faced since Iran called for his death in 1989 over his novel “The Satanic Verses” – Kushmaul said she ran forward to help but was terrified there “would be a bomb or another attacker.”

“I saw Salman Rushdie on the floor. I saw other people trying to restrain the attacker,” she said, explaining that a reverend handed her a bloody knife when she arrived.

“I was afraid someone else would grab it. I didn’t know if someone else would use it.”

Kushmaul handed the blade to a security guard as “the screaming was continuing,” then took Rushdie’s microphone and began evacuating the theater, she testified.

Chautauqua Institution chair of education Jordan Steves was backstage monitoring video of the lecture when he noticed “some audience member making his way onto stage.”

“I can see on the monitor some swinging of arms and it became violent,” he testified, explaining that he ran to the stage to help and rammed into the attacker with “as much force as I can manage.”

“As soon as I saw the interaction was of a violent nature, I knew I had to intervene,” Steves said.

Asked if the attacker was in the courtroom, Steves pointed to the 26-year-old Matar.

“To my right. Light blue shirt,” he said, pointing his finger. “At the corner of the table over between those two gentlemen wearing blue jackets.”

Rushdie, 77, was left blind in one eye and suffering nerve and liver damage after the attack, which he barely survived.

Matar has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault.

During opening statements on Monday, District Attorney Jason Schmidt said Matar was “seemingly on a mission” and “almost succeeded in killing Mr. Rushdie” while rushing the stage immediately after the talk began.

Rushdie and Reese had “no indication of what was to happen next,” Schmidt told the rapt jurors.

Matar “forcefully and efficiently in speed plunged the knife into Mr. Rushdie over and over and over again — stabbing, swinging and slicing into Mr. Rushdie’s head, face, throat…even the palm of his hand which Mr. Rushdie raised to shield from the attack,” Schmidt said.

Rushdie fled to the back of the stage but Matar pursued him, the prosecutor said.

Schmidt noted the jurors will hear from Rushdie and he will detail the “injuries sustained in the attack.”

The prosecutor also said a surgeon will take the stand to testify that if Rushdie was not rushed to a Level 1 trauma center he would have most likely died from his injuries.

Matar, wearing ill-fitted baggy clothing, sat expressionless while Schmidt recounted the attack.

Matar’s defense team on Monday attempted to argue that the trial should be delayed for a third time because his lead attorney, Nathaniel Barone, is in the hospital.

Foley denied the motion, saying Matar’s other attorneys are capable and they should have “anticipated situations like this” because Barone has been ill for about a year.

Matar, who was born in America but is a dual Lebanese citizen, told The Post in a jailhouse interview days after the stabbing, he was inspired to attack Rushdie because he’s  “someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”

Rushdie’s controversial novel “The Satanic Verses,”  has sparked outrage among some Muslim communities since it was published in 1988 for its depictions of Islam and the prophet Muhammad.

The late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989 over the book.

Matar told The Post he’d only read a couple pages of the book, but doesn’t “think [Rushdie] is a very good person.”

“I don’t like him. I don’t like him very much,” he said.