(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
That was the sound in the departure hall of the Brussels airport this morning moments after two explosions.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
When the first bomb went off, a lawyer named Alexander Daymis (ph) just about to walk through the doors to check in for his flight to the United States.
ALEXANDER DAYMIS: I saw soldiers coming running with their guns in hand, and then people began to walk out of the terminal. People were lost, scared, covered in dust and blood for some of them.
CORNISH: An hour later, a reporter for POLITICO, Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli, was walking down the street toward her hotel in the city's European quarter. She heard a blast coming from the subway station nearby.
SILVIA SCIORILLI BORRELLI: For a second, I thought it was just me being silly because I had just gotten the news of the airport explosion. But then I actually realized that there was smoke coming out of the station. I was on the road, it was 20 feet away from me, and people just started storming out. Some were covered in blood, others were crying.
CORNISH: Borrelli ran back to her hotel. Paramedics had turned it into a makeshift medical clinic to house the injured.
BORRELLI: The lobby was total chaos. It looked like an emergency room of a hospital after a war. There were stretches everywhere, a few injured people lying down, covered in blood, rescuers helping those that were wounded.
SIEGEL: More than 30 people have been confirmed dead, and at least 230 injured in today's events. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.