Oscar Pistorius in his first TV interview has gone into graphic detail about the night that he killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013 after firing four times through a locked toilet door.

The South African athlete insists the killing was an accident saying: "I heard a noise at the toilet and before I knew it I'd fired four shots".

He said of the moment he found her body slumped in the bathroom: "I opened the toilet door and immediately when I saw Reeva she was over the toilet. And I [breaks down], at that point I knew that I'd killed her. I knew that she was dead. And I went down on my knees and pulled her onto me.
"And I put her on the bathroom floor; and I pull the curtain.. the towel down for her head.
"And I just see blood and it's just blood everywhere. [sobbing] It's just blood everywhere... So much blood! [sobbing] and I don't know what to do.
"I'm trying to pick her up but there's so much blood I can't stand up. And I thought Reeva had started breathing, so I had my fingers in her mouth and I was trying to give her mouth to mouth, but there was so much blood."

Pistorius, then sobbed and wailed into his hands and walked out of the interview in tears to compose himself.

In another section, his voice broke and he looked to the floor as he added: "I did take Reeva's life and I have to live with that. I can smell the blood. I can feel the warmness of it on my hands. And to know that that's your fault, that that's what you've done.
"And I understand the pain people feel, that loved her and miss her. I feel that same pain.
I feel that same hate for myself. I feel that same difficulty in understanding this. And I look back and I think, I always think - how did this possibly happen? I think, how could this have happened? How could this have happened?"

Pistorius also says he regularly "wakes up ill or wakes up crying" because of dreams about Reeva.

"You dream you're waking up next to her. And you wake up to reality and you realise ... You just want to go back to sleep and you realise it's not the truth whatever you were dreaming, worse than a nightmare."

The disgraced athlete said that he was willing to spend 10 years behind bars for the death of his girlfriend but insists he shouldn't spend "a day in jail for murder".