Brussels attack: Didn't want my girls to lose their dad, recounts athlete

Washington: A professional basketball player who survived the terror attack at Brussels airport said that as he lay bleeding profusely and fearing death, he thought of something odd: his daughter's tennis skills.

"It's funny, the things you think of," said Sebastien Bellin, a Brazilian-born athlete who plays in the Belgian professional league.

Bellin said he was not sure he would live. A photo of him lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from the leg and with his face blackened, has been widely circulated.

"I just didn't want my girls to grow up without a dad, you know?" Bellin, 37, said of his two daughters in an interview on the American network ABC from his hospital bed.

He added: "I started playing tennis with my oldest, my seven year old. She's a hell of a tennis player, and so I was like, 'I got to get through this, you know, because she needs her coach.' And some of the things that go through your head, they seem so trivial but it gets you through those moments."

Bellin, who makes his home in the United States, said he witnessed the first explosion at the airport on Tuesday.

"I remember seeing a first explosion at the pharmacy at the airport, and I turned my head and I saw all these people running... I think I blacked out a little bit," Bellin said.

"The whole time I was just trying, I told myself, 'I got to make it, I got to make it, I got to make it,' and I when got in the ambulance I knew I was good," he said.