London, Oct 26 : Princess Diana repeated the words “Oh my God, oh my God” as she lay dying immediately after the fatal car crash that killed her and companion Dodi Al Fayed ten years ago, the inquest into her death has heard.

The witness, Damian Dalby, a volunteer fireman at the time, was in Paris with his brother and a group of friends when they encountered the crash in the Pont d'Alma tunnel on August 31 1997.

Speaking via videolink from the French capital, Dalby told the inquest how he rushed over to the wreckage of the Mercedes, where photographers had already gathered.

He said that a semi- conscious Diana attempted to speak as she lay beside her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and recalled hearing her gasp the words, reports the Daily Mail.

Ian Burnett, counsel for the inquest, asked him: "Was it right the lady in the car was trying to speak?"

Dalby replied: "Yes. She was saying, 'oh, my God; oh, my God."'

Burnett asked him if it was right that he did not speak English at that time, to which Dalby replied: "That is true even today."

"There was a tourist round there and I asked him to translate to the bodyguard not to move because the emergency services were arriving," he added.

Dalby gave evidence using a transcript of a statement he made to police hours after the crash.

In the statement, he described the translator as dark-skinned, possibly North African, and wearing a suit and tie.

Dalby said that the photographers refused to leave when they were ushered back, and he heard one say: "We are earning our money out of that, please leave us to do our jobs."

He said he remembered one photographer, who, after taking a photograph, shouted: "She's alive," and then tried to push the other photographers away.

Burnett asked him: "It appeared to you he wanted to stop the others taking photographs?"

Dalby replied: "Yes."

In a police statement read to the inquest, Sebastien Masseron, who had been travelling with Mr Dalby, said: "I heard one photographer call over to a colleague who was on a scooter at the end of the tunnel, 'Come back, come back, she's alive'."

Masseron added that onlookers had begun crowding around the Mercedes, which still had its rear right-hand door open. "You could see a woman," he said.

Diana and her lover, Dodi Fayed, were killed, along with the Mercedes driver, Henri Paul, in the Paris crash on 31 August, 1997. (ANI)