The Georgian journalist who snapped Brussels Airport carnage on iPhone

“It could happen anywhere,” was probably not a thought going through the mind of Ketevan Kardava on Tuesday morning, as she was waiting at the Brussels Airlines desk in Zaventem to check in for a flight to Geneva to cover a meeting. Kardava is the Brussels-based correspondent for Georgia’s public broadcaster, and the whole of Europe is her beat.

Then an explosion, then another, and chaos. But the 36-year-old didn’t run. “I was waiting for a third explosion,” she told De Standaard. “Beside me was one of those booths where you can have passport photos made. I crawled inside. There was an older lady standing nearby, and I took her with me. There was room for two. We sat there for more than a minute. We thought it was all over.”

When she emerged, instinct made her not head for the exits, but take her iPhone and start taking pictures. Everyone has by now seen the one of the dust-covered Indian woman in airport seating, her yellow jacket handing in tatters, one shoe missing, blood on her face. The woman – soon identified as JetAirways flight attendant Nidhi Chaphekar – has become an icon of the terrorist attacks, the photo seen round the world.

In the airport corridors, Kardava came across Sebastien Bellin, the Brazilian-Belgian basketball player for Ghent Hawks. The also now famous photo shows him stretched out on the floor, a pool of blood by his left leg. Like so many others, he was wounded by what doctors now say was a nail-bomb.

“I’m sorry I left him there,” Kardava said later. “I saw that he was alive and that he had problems with his legs. But there was nothing I could do to help. The soldiers came along right then to tell us we had to go outside.”

In another interview, with USA Today, she explained what the experience of being in a terrorist attack now means to her. “I’ve lived here for eight years, and I’ve covered a lot of stories, even the Paris terror attacks. But now I know. It can be anywhere, any time. Now I realise the meaning of the phrase ‘terrorism has no boundaries’.”

Photo courtesy CBS/YouTube