A SECURITY guard has relived the horrific moment he witnessed a terror attack outside a hospital in Liverpool.

Today (November 14) marks a year since Liverpool Women’s Hospital was targeted by fanatic Emad Al Swealmeen, who was killed after detonating a bomb inside a taxi near to the hospital’s busy main entrance.

Darren Knowles, who was working as a hospital security guard at the time, told GB News that what he witnessed will live with him forever.

He said: “I was just outside in the car on a break pumping my tyre up because I had a bit of a flat tyre.Then the next minute I saw a taxi rushing, and I walked over thinking, why was it speeding, because you don’t really see that at a hospital. Then I just heard a slight bang, and grey smoke and black smoke coming from the front of the car.

“We ran over, I saw the taxi driver got out, I grabbed him as he tried to go back for these takings, his mobile phone and everything. I just held him back saying: ‘No, it’ll probably go up again.’ And that’s when he told me basically what had happened and there was a terrorist inside the car.

Darren added: “We just couldn’t believe what happened, especially with it being the Children’s Hospital where babies are born and young families and everything are present. It is just horrific and leaves you traumatised. It’s a memory that I am never ever going to lose. It’s just something I’ve learned to cope with a year on.”

Al Swealmeen was killed when his homemade bomb went off outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Remembrance Sunday last year. He was an asylum seeker born in Iraq who is understood to have converted to Christianity in 2017. The driver, David Perry, somehow escaped any life-threatening injuries.

Speaking to the Mirror over the weekend for the first time about the incident, Mr Perry said he was still haunted by the “clown-like” grin on evil the bomber’s face as he glanced at him in his rear-view mirror seconds before the bomb went off.

The 46-year-old said: “Even now I don’t think anyone can understand how I’m alive. But my injuries are nothing when you think he could have gone into the hospital and done a lot more damage than getting me.” David said he felt no hate towards the bomber – instead seeing him as a “poor lad who had issues”.

Recalling what happened he added: “It was a normal work-day. But it’s the strangest thing, I thought ‘something is going to happen today’. He chose the fare himself off the on-screen display as the pick-up address, Rutland Avenue, was not far from him.

“When he got in the taxi, I remember he had a Middle East accent. I remember him having a backpack or bag.

” He was so quick to get on to the back seat. He sank out of the way in my blind spot. I thought, ‘this isn’t right, why is he doing this?’. All he said was ‘women’s hospital’.”

“Just before getting to the hospital, I said to him ‘has your wife had a baby mate?’ But I got no response at all, and I thought ‘something is not right here’.

“I’ve looked in the mirror and I’ve just got this picture of a clown smiling at me and holding something.”