A Glasgow airport worker relived yesterday the moment when an alleged terrorist turned to him and shouted: “There are bombs.” Henry Lambie, a former firefighter, said he thought that there had been a road accident when a Jeep crashed into the terminal building.

He told Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London that he grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran towards the burning vehicle as hundreds of passengers fled. Mr Lambie, who was working as a passenger assistant, said that thick black smoke quickly began to fill the building. “On the forecourt I saw this big Asian-looking guy who had obviously been in the car,” he said. “I have seen that before and I know what had happened to him.

“His clothes were shredded and he was having a few punches at the uniformed policemen. Now I know it was an off-duty police officer with a fire extinguisher training it on him. He was put out by that time - I did not see him on fire.”

Mr Lambie said that a huge amount of heat was coming from the burning car and he was certain the man would die from his injuries. He said that he used his extinguisher to try to damp down the building as he waited for the emergency services. Mr Lambie said: “Just at that time, from my left, an Asian-looking chap came towards me and he was pointing at me, saying: ‘Don't do that'.

“I thought, why don't I do this? He came closer, he was quite determined, he was coming at me. I thought he was going to have a go at me, so I hit him in the face with the jet of water. You can see from my statement that he looked a bit crazy.

“I thought he was on drugs or something. He just could not focus on me.”

Mr Lambie said that two police officers ran over and ordered the man to step away from the car, but he ran off. He told the court: “I said: ‘Get back'. He pointed towards the vehicle and said: ‘There are bombs.'

“At this point I thought I was out of my depth here because I had just got a fire extinguisher. All I had left was a rapidly depleting fire extinguisher, so all I did was keep hitting him in the face with it.”

Asked exactly what the Asian man said, Mr Lambie said: “What I remember was it was a two-handed gesture: ‘There are bombs'.”

The court was hearing evidence from a series of witnesses to the car bomb attack at the airport at about 3pm on June 30 last year.

Bilal Abdulla, 29, who was the passenger in the car, watched impassively from the dock. He and a second man, Mohammed Asha, 28, are accused of conspiracy to murder and to cause explosions. They deny the offences.

William Gibson, a taxi driver, said in a statement read to the court that his Mercedes Veto minibus was hit by the Jeep near the airport. The car collided with the taxi as it forced its way through a control barrier. The court was told that the road beside the terminal building was restricted to taxis, buses and emergency vehicles, but the Jeep entered by tailgating Mr Gibson's vehicle. Mr Gibson said: “When the barrier went up for me, I started moving through the barrier. Then I became aware of the roar of an engine by my side, my right-hand off-side.

“Before I got the chance to look around and see what the noise was coming from, my car was dented. It was a Jeep coming through the barrier behind me. The roar of the engine was it coming up beside me.

“It scraped up the off-side of my vehicle and hit my mirror. I was annoyed. I thought it was a drunk driver.” Mr Gibson described how the four-wheel-drive car accelerated into the terminal building.

He said that he watched as the vehicle became trapped before the driver and passenger got out and began to fight with police and onlookers. He said that the men threw petrol bombs and appeared to try to stop people getting close to the Jeep. “The guy was jumping around like a kangaroo, jumping away and kicking away,” he said. “I got the impression he was on drugs because he was kicking away non-stop.”

The trial continues.

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