Passengers have told of the chaos, panic and fear inside the blood-smeared terminal following the co-ordinated attack on Istanbul airport, killing no fewer than 41 victims.

One of the travellers, Laurence Cameron, had just landed at the airport, as the three suicide bombers went on their deadly rampage through Ataturk Airport Tuesday night, shooting anyone who got in their way, before detonating their deadly loads and engulfing the terminal in the flames.

By the time Cameron stepped into the terminal, those who had escaped their bombs and bullets were fleeing for their lives.

“It must have been just as we touched down,” Cameron said. “I did not even hear the explosions, but as I walked out and round the corner, the whole building was running screaming towards me.

“It was just mass panic, guards running around with guns,” he said.

Cameron was still unaware then of exactly what had taken place in the airport – the third largest in Europe. In the hours that followed, the true scale of what happened in those hallways began to emerge.

Among those who lost their lives were 23 Turkish citizens, including a hero customs officer who desperately tried to stop the attackers, a newly-wed father and a young graduate, who had only just started her new job.

A number of people had only come to the airport to meet their loved ones, including Göksel Kurnaz, 38, who was picking up his boss from the airport.

Joseph Haznedaroğlu had only married 10 days before: pictures have emerged of his wedding, with Mr Haznedaroğlu beaming next to his beautiful new bride.

Yeni Ise Girmisti had just started a new job, while Gülşen Bahadır, a TGS Yer employee who is understood to have been shot, wrote on her Facebook a week before, “I accept, I love and thank you, everything in my life”.

A day after the attack, a friend wrote on her Facebook page: “Rest in heaven with a beautiful human…”

Cameron, originally from Kent, was stuck for half-an-hour, waiting at customs, before he and his fellow passengers were allowed through and out the terminal.

However, the only way to leave the building was to go through the very place where the bombs had been detonated less than an hour before.

“There was blood on the floor. It was just horrendous. Debris everywhere. A lot of the ceiling panels had fallen down, smashed all over the floor.

“Coming out to the taxi rank, it was just full of ambulances. Blood was smeared all up to the car park.

“People were in tears, especially people with families. They were quite clearly traumatised. There was a lot of uncertainty; no one really knew what was going on. Were we safe where we were?”

He added: “There is nowhere to go but out through passport control (if you are in an airport terminal). It’s not nice – it should be safe, but at that moment it was not.”

Two South African tourists, Paul and Susie Roos from Cape Town, were also at the airport and due to fly home at the time of the explosions and were making their way up to the departure hall, a floor above arrivals.

“We came up from the arrivals to the departures, up the escalator when we heard these shots going off,” Roos told news agencies.

“There was this guy going roaming around, he was dressed in black and he had a hand gun.”