Injured on luggage trollies, chaos, says Brussels eyewitness

Brussels, March 22: At least 22 stretchered casualties, fire engines, ambulances, the injured in luggage trolleys and chaos -- that is how a tourist from Wales reported an eyewitness account on the Brussels mayhem that claimed multiple lives in the Belgium capital.

"I have seen 22 stretchered casualties," Anthony Barrett wrote on the microblogging site in a series of tweets immediately after the terror attack at the Zaventem airport.

Barrett said he was stationed in room No.4122 of the Sheraton Hotel, opposite the terminal building. He said he was using twitter and Whatsapp to report the incident as he was unable to make any calls.

"Incident at Brussels Airport. Two loud 'crumps' like furniture being moved in the hotel room above me. People fleeing the terminal building," he tweeted shortly after the attack.

"I don't know what has happened but there has clearly been some kind of incident," he wrote in bewilderment.

In the next tweet, Barertt mentioned the evacuation at the airport and the arrival of the police and ambulances.

"Police now seem to be evacuating the airport...Fire engines and more ambulances arriving on the scene at the Brussels Airport," he tweeted.

"From my hotel room, I can see one person lying on the ground...I can see someone being rushed away on a stretcher."

He said that he saw injured "being taken to ambulances on luggage trolleys".

He said that rescuers used the hotel "as an evacuation and casualty centre" as "bomb dogs" were also employed "to sweep the hotel" in apprehension of hidden explosives or terrorists.

Barrett also posted photographs of the airports that he apparently clicked from his window in the aftermath of the carnage that came months after an Islamist terror attack in France killed 130 people.

IANS