Frankly it just felt like all out war...everybody was in a total state of shock

Cameraman Mel Williams

Mr Williams works for a film and tv production company and has been living in America for the past three years.

He said a feeling of "total shock and a sense of numbness" has now engulfed the city.

"The first thing I heard was at about 0850BST, a colleague of mine was shouting out and I thought that he had been hurt.

"I ran to the back of the building and we have a view that looks down south towards where the Trade Centers were.

"My colleague shouted 'a plane just crashed into the twin towers go and get a camera'.

It just got worse as the morning went on, people were jumping out of the building to their death

Mel Williams

"I ran in and there was just billowing smoke coming out of the World Trade Center.

"I think it was about 18 minutes later there was a surreal picture..... a speck came down into the top of the frame, it almost looked like a fly on the shot and then it went behind the tower and all of a sudden there was an explosion on the second tower."

"Frankly it just felt like all out war...everybody was in a total state of shock.

"It just got worse as the morning went on, people were jumping out of the building to their death."

Emergency teams are sifting through the rubble in a perilous operation to find thousands of people trapped under the rubble of the World Trade Center.

One of the towers begins to collapse

Eight survivors have been pulled clear and around 40 bodies have so far been recovered.

Smoke and dust continue to billow over much of New York, nearly 24 hours after the twin towers of the centre were reduced to rubble.

Cardiff-born investment banker Paul Roles, who works 20 minutes away from the World Trade Center, said one of the first things he did was to try to contact Morgan Stanley colleagues working there.

"We had a company broadcast this morning which said that while most of our 3,500 colleagues based at the south tower were okay, there will still some not accounted for

"We're all in work today but everyone's just going through the motions. There is an unreal atmosphere, people are truly numb."

Meanwhile in Washington, the Pentagon - the heart of the US defence establishment - reopened on Wednesday, even though only half of the building is safe for use after attack by another crashing hijacked jet.

Reports from Boston say a car has been seized at the international airport laden with Arabic language flight training manuals, and that five Arab men have been identified as the suspected hijackers.

The chief suspect remains Saudi-born dissident Osama Bin Laden, living under the protection of the Taleban authorities in Afghanistan.

An emergency number for Britons worried about friends and relatives has also been issued: 020 7008 0000.