Eyewitness: Colombo air raid

British businessman Barry Walker witnessed the Sri Lankan anti-aircraft battle on Tamil Tiger planes, from his five star hotel in central Colombo.

I was sitting outside by the hotel pool, just relaxing and watching the world go by, when there was a blackout in the entire area.

Sri Lankan soldiers on guard by the Inland Revenue building in Colombo

It was evening, so it was very dark.

Then some anti-aircraft fire started up, it was very, very heavy. Lots of shell fire.

Just as it started, someone from the hotel came outside and very discreetly said: "Could everybody slowly come and follow me inside." Which is what we did.

We got inside the building and the security people herded women and children into the basement first.

I was standing by the door watching the firing going on. It lasted about 20 minutes.

We were right in the middle of an arc of gunfire and there were search lights into the sky trying to pick out aircraft. The whole area was blacked out.

Our hotel, the Cinnamon Grand, is about an hour away from the airport. The firing on the ground appeared to be coming from the Hilton Hotel area, going left-to-right from where I was looking.

Just as I was about to go down in the basement, we heard a massive explosion. It was about 500 yards from where we are. It could have been from a plane, or the aircraft was hit and dropped from above, we don't know.

I think it was very near the Trans Asia Hotel. Someone sitting next to me had a friend inside the hotel who was texting him. We stayed in the basement for about two hours.

We've now all come up to the reception, they're playing music quite loudly to try to make us feel OK.