LONDON - A man who was among the first to arrive at the scene of the crash that killed Princess Diana told an inquest Wednesday that he thought it might have been a terrorist attack. His companion said her first reaction was that it was a movie set.

Testifying by video-link from the Court of Appeal in Paris, Antonio Lopes Borges denied a lawyer's suggestion that he had told his companion, Ana Simao, that he thought it might be an assassination.

The issue arose as a coroner's inquest resumed in London following a trip to Paris, where the jury saw key scenes, including the Ritz Hotel, which Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed left shortly after midnight on Aug. 31, 1997, and the Pont d'Alma tunnel, where they were fatally injured when their car crashed into a pillar.

Fayed's father, Mohamed al Fayed, contends that the couple was assassinated in a plot orchestrated by Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

Richard Keen, a lawyer representing the family of Henri Paul, the driver who also died in the crash, put it to Lopes Borges that he had told Simao that he thought the crash might be an assassination.

The issue was the word "attentat," by which Lopes Borges said he meant "terrorist attack" rather than assassination.

Simao said her first impression was: "I thought it was a movie, and they were shooting a movie."

Keen asked whether Lopes Borges had used the word "attentat."

"I think so," Simao said.

"Did you know that John F. Kennedy was shot on Nov. 22, 1963?" Keen asked.

"I don't know," she said, but said in response to a further question that she was aware that Kennedy was killed.

"Was that an 'attentat?'" Keen asked.

"I don't know," she said.

"Well, he was shot," Keen said. "Do you infer from this that it was an 'attentat?'"

"That is a murder," Simao said. "I do not know if that was an 'attentat' but it is a murder."

Lopes Borges described seeing other cars chasing a black Mercedes in Paris and saw the frantic moments in the tunnel after the car crashed. He said minutes later he saw the same Mercedes that had been chased crashed in a tunnel.

Lopes Borges, a Portuguese national and longtime Paris resident, said he had stopped his car behind a Mercedes at a red light near the Place de La Concorde.

As the light turned green, the Mercedes sped away with the other cars in pursuit, said Lopes Borges.

"They were either in front of me or close to me, when the traffic lights changed, they all started," he said, adding one vehicle, a four-wheel-drive bumped into his car as it sped off.

Keen asked Lopes Borges whether the Mercedes was in the left lane, flanked by the pursuing cars, as it headed down the embankment road, Cours la Reine 1, and whether that would have prevented the Mercedes from exiting to the right.

Lopes Borges said he had not seen any of the cars again until reaching the tunnel.

Keen's suggestion may have been directed to the issue of why Paul chose the route he did. Lord Justice Scott Baker, who is presiding as coroner, told the jury last week that most professional drivers would have turned off the embankment road before reaching the tunnel.

French authorities and Britain's Metropolitan Police concluded that Paul was drunk and speeding, and that the Aug. 31, 1997, crash was an accident.

Lopes Borges said he saw the Mercedes in the tunnel — but it had crashed and four or five people were on foot moving around the accident scene.

"Could you go back because we are going to have an explosion?" he said one of the men told him.

He reversed the car and parked outside the tunnel. He said he saw flashes as the first photographer on the scene snapped photos. Another photographer arrived. Within 10 minutes, a man he thought was a doctor arrived, followed shortly by police and firefighters.

The inquest — required by British law when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or of unknown causes — had been delayed for 10 years because of the two exhaustive investigations.