Ida Sulaiman, who has lived at the hotel without incident, said the situation had become “unbearable.”

“I had to take my baby downstairs in the back of an ambulance,” she said. “My husband and I felt like our bodies were being pulled out of our bodies.

“Our doors slammed. We felt like you could hear guns going off in the corridor.”

Mohamed Farah, from Liverpool, said he had gone to see a friend in the hotel’s lobby when the fighting started.

“Everyone was running to safety and the security staff had to go in back as well,” he said. “We stayed in this corridor but I saw two men on fire on the side. I could see a woman bleeding badly.”

Mohammed Ahmed, a British student who is in Istanbul for a conference, heard the shooting and ran out to find his brother.

“He was lying on the ground on the floor. They put him in an ambulance and he’s in a critical condition,” Ahmed said.

He has posted images showing dead people on Twitter, and an online video shows a dead woman laid across the floor.

Some reports suggested that the attack was directed by Islamic State militants, although the Islamic State group denied any responsibility.

A US official said the militants’ statements could have been misdirected.

“In the past, we’ve had intelligence reports that the US was targeting ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and he had been specifically targeted by U.S. aircraft,” the official said. “That’s not the case now.

“What this is has more to do with an individual who was killed in an airstrike near him.”

On Monday afternoon, Britain deployed its armed forces to Britain’s airports — the first of many steps by the government to bolster security on its four million residents after terror attacks that killed 52 and injured hundreds more.

The first flights carrying British tourists to Turkey took off again late on Monday and a further 11 had already left.

A third security update — airport capacity is to be increased — is likely, and there will be additional security checks on the ground at Istanbul’s main airports, said Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu at a news conference.

“Turkey’s main airports have a very heavy security level but they remain calm,” he said.

“They take this opportunity to send a message to