The senior police officer in charge of Omagh at the time of the 1998 bombing has told how he tried to cope with the aftermath of the bomb while trying to console his son whose girlfriend had been murdered in the blast.
James Baxter was a RUC superintendent and had been visiting Bangor on the day of the explosion when he got word of the bomb alert.
He said the message he got said the device was in the area of the courthouse. He ordered a full evacuation.
He later heard a news bulletin to say the device had exploded and as he rushed back to Co Tyrone heard that there had been casualties.
Mr Baxter described how he tried to function professionally as it became increasingly obvious that he knew many of the victims personally.
"Late on the evening of 15th (August) I became aware that my son's girlfriend had also died in the explosion. Unable to return home I contacted my wife by telephone and asked her to break the news to my son."
Mr Baxter told the inquiry that the day after the bombing he tried to visit as many of the bereaved homes as he could - including that of his son's murdered girlfriend.
"I found this to be the most difficult and emotional duty of my career as I was met with family members devastated by their loss in such an horrific manner," he said.
"Whilst attempting to act in a professional manner I found that I too was grieving because of my son's girlfriend's death."
Mr Baxter also spoke of how his officers had been "traumatised" by the bombing. Many felt guilty that they had evacuated people in the mistaken belief that the bomb was at the courthouse.
Watch: Inquiry into Omagh bombing under way
They congregated at the other end of town, close to where the device had actually been planted.
Several of those were among the dead and seriously injured he said.
He also spoke of a concerted hoax call campaign in the months after the explosion. On each occasion he evacuated the town, despite calls for him from business leaders in the town to ignore them.
On one of those occasions, a week after the bombing, the same code word used during the bombing had been used to call in a hoax.
Mr Baxter described meeting a constable that day who had also been on duty the day of the bombing and was assisting with the evacuation.
She said "I don't think I can do this anymore," and became very distressed.
Mr Baxter said a dedicated investigation was commenced which resulted in the arrest of a man in Letterkenny who had been responsible for 70 hoax calls.
The hoax campaign ended.
Mr Baxter also spoke of the additional pressure put on him and his officers by a series of VIP visits to the town in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
"The requests seemed never ending and severely restricted my available resources.
"Many visits in the following days were facilitated which added immensely to the pressures and stress of dealing with this atrocity."
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Blast was 'a flash, a great suction, a sharp pain in my back'
Later, two officers who were in Omagh that day had their statements read into the record.
Allan Palmer was helping to evacuate the town when the bomb went off.
He described in graphic terms finding the dead and trying to help the injured.
"The memories and emotions that I carry with me every day are too many to include...the horrors, the guilt, the helplessness, the anger, the hurt and many more have all had a serious impact on both my physical and phycological health"
He had been blown off his feet by the blast. He described it as a "flash, a great suction, a sharp pain in my back", caused by flying glass.
"I saw a male person lying near a gutter with his head on fire. The man was trying to get up while other police officers were giving first aid. I was moving through this terrible scene trying to assist where I could."
Mr Palmer took casualties to the local hospital but when he arrived was told there was no more room.
In the car park of the hospital, he was approached by a member of the public with a leg wrapped in a blanket who handed it to him. He gave it to a medical worker in the emergency department before being told to take his casualties to the Erne Hospital in Enniskillen.
There he helped casualties off military helicopters before a doctor insisted he get treatment himself.
He said he had given his statement so that his experiences could be recorded.
Omagh inquiry: The victims remembered
"The memories and emotions that I carry with me every day are too many to include...the horrors, the guilt, the helplessness, the anger, the hurt and many more have all had a serious impact on both my physical and psychological health."
The statement of Julian Elliot was also read. A police officer, he had been detailed to help liaise with families seeking information about their loved ones at the town's leisure centre set up as information point in the wake of the bombing.
He described how he had tried to tell them what he could, having taken off his "uniform head" and put his "human head" on.
"I thought if I was one of these poor people I would want to know," he said, adding he told them unofficially that their loved ones were dead.
"One by one I took someone out of the rooms. I said 'walk with me'. I can't officially tell you with a police officer's hat on and tell you, but as a human being I can tell you.
"Do you want to know what I know? And of course they all said yes.
"Some said I know that my son or daughter or mother is dead. I know that they're gone, please tell me. We need to be put out of our misery.
"Everyone was told a different way and I tried to manage my words the best that I could with who I was speaking to at the time, be it a wee old woman, or a big strong man.
"However you do it, can you prepare your family for this scenario. Some hugged me, some beat my chest, some hyperventilated and some collapsed on the floor. It was a mixture of responses."
There was bodies everywhere, says former police officer
A former police officer who helped recover the bodies from the bombing described how he treated each person with dignity as they were laid in an entry to protect them from the eyes of the public and the press.
Richard Scott described to the inquiry how when he got to the scene he was unable to see any of the deceased.
In evidence he said the only thing he could see were polystyrene beads which he believes came from shop insulation.
But once he saw past that, he began to realise there was "bodies everywhere". He said the number of dead was "overwhelming".
He was part of a team that began recovering the bodies because the media had begun to arrive at the scene.
The bodies were moved to a small entry just off the main street and close to the scene of the bombing.
"That was when it hit me, how many people had been killed. We started off at the far side of the entry and within a short space of time the entry was full and then we had to go to a business above the entry and that's where we put the rest of the bodies and body parts.
"That entry is the focal point for me. That entry is the point that I think about all the time. That entry for me is the reminder for the carnage that was brought to our town."
He said it was important for him to say to the families that each of the bodies was treated with great dignity.
Blankets and curtains were taken from a nearby shop so they could be wrapped in them before being moved.
Mr Scott went on to describe the terrible impact the bombing had had on him. He was diagnosed with PTSD, for a time after the bombing he said he was "out of control", and that for many alcohol had been used as a crutch.
Things like polystyrene and rushing water were still flashback triggers for him. He told the inquiry he had a clear recollection of a strong stream of water tinged with blood running down the street.
He said he had found it particularly difficult to deal with the fact that in the hours after the bombing he had knowledge of the dead which he was unable to share with the families of the deceased. He said he had felt a lot of guilt about that.
When he finally got home after the bombing, he had taken off every stitch of clothing he had been wearing. It was stained with blood and gave off a "vile, vile smell". He said he thought by getting rid of his clothing he might in some way be able to disassociate from the atrocity.
He was full of praise for his fellow officers who had responded on the day - especially those who had tended to the dead and injured.
He said those who had planted the bomb were "cowards" who caused carnage.
"It is they who should be paying for the pain and distress they have caused to those who have suffered since ... and will do so in the future.
"It is they who should be here today to explain the impact of their deeds. They, and those who have remained silent ever since," added Mr Scott.
'Terror and horror' recalled by man who was young constable at the time
Norman Haslett was a young constable at the time of the bombing. He said he had thought long and hard about providing evidence to the inquiry.
He said he had learned to compartmentalise all that he had seen and done that day in the immediate aftermath of the bombing.
He said the "terror and horror" were indelibly etched into his soul.
"I have placed the memories, the pain and the suffering, the sounds and the smells and the images from that day into a box in my mind marked 'Omagh', and over time I have learned to discipline myself not to open the box save for one single day every year, the anniversary of the bombing."
Mr Haslett, now a senior serving PSNI officer, told how he had gone to the scene when the bomb warning was received, how he had driven past the car bomb and begun clearing the area around the courthouse where they had been told it had been planted.
He heard a loud explosion and saw a pall of smoke coming from the other end of the town.
When he arrived to the scene it was "carnage and chaos".
"If there is a hell, and I think that there probably is, then I'm fairly certain that what I saw and heard and smelled just at the moment must resemble it."
He saw people who were "obviously beyond help" and others horribly mutilated.
He described "high pitched guttural screams" from the injured and others who were terribly still.
"I remember at the time almost being in disbelief that a human being could possibly inflict such damage to another human being for any reason, never mind for the sake of a political cause."
He said it quickly became apparent that the operation was moving quickly from one of rescue to one of recovery.
Mr Haslett described taking a badly injured woman to hospital in the back of his police car. She later died.
He returned to the bomb scene where he and others set about collecting the bodies and moving them out of sight and into Market Street Arcade.
The bodies were numbered using torn up paper. Mr Haslett said it may now seem impersonal, but it was the only way they could keep an accurate record of how many people had been killed.
When the arcade was full, they put the bodies into a shop, a few doors up.
He was given responsibility for bodies number 12 and 13 as they were moved to a temporary morgue.
Number 12 turned out to be Philomena Skelton, number 13 was the young Spanish boy Fernando Blasco Baselga who also died.
They were taken to the temporary mortuary where Mr Haslett was asked to search them for identification or identifying marks. He said Fernando had barely a mark, having been killed by a small piece of shrapnel.
"The only possession that this beautiful wee boy had on him was a small red Swiss army knife.
"For me, who had responsibility for looking after him after his death, Fernando and a Swiss Army knife were the embodiment of the innocence that was lost as a result of the Omagh bombing.
"He was just an innocent wee boy on his holidays with his pen knife in his pocket and he was murdered for a political cause by people of insignificance whose humanity was indifferent to the consequences of their actions."
He said for years he could not look at a Swiss Army knife.
Mr Haslett said his belief was that the bomb had been deliberately placed to target police officers who would have been expected to be establishing a security cordon some distance from where they thought the device had been left.
The warnings had been vague "and perhaps deliberately so". He said the blame for what happened in Omagh rested with the dissident republicans who had planted the bomb.
Police had responded by driving straight into danger in an attempt to save lives.
"I can honestly say in good conscience that we did everything we could try and save life and preserve the life of the innocent people of Omagh on that day."
Finally, he said he wanted the families of the dead to know that they had been treated with great dignity.
"They were never alone, and we did we everything we could for them. We treated the dead as if they were our own," he said.
Retired sergeant remembers 'smell of death' in the town
Philip Marshall was the sergeant in charge that day. Now retired he said it had been a sunny summer Saturday when the bomb warning came in.
He went to the town and began clearing the area around the courthouse where they had been told it had been planted.
He said the warnings had been vague, with no information on the make or model of the car, the colour or the registration.
"If we'd got any of that, we wouldn't be sitting here today," he said.
When the bomb went off at the other end of the town and he arrived there he described a "smell of death".
He said for 30 seconds to a minute he was in a state of shock. Then he had to turn off and remember that he was in charge and had a job to do.
He described how people were "burning to death" under the blazing engine block of the bomb car.
His officers and members of the public who had volunteered to help, managed to lift it so they could slide people out.
A number survived but one died.
He described a "scene from hell". At one point he looked into a shop window and saw the body of a dead infant. He was unsure whether it was his own daughter who was the same age. As he was trying to work it all out, he felt something nudging his leg.
He looked down and a body had been carried down the street by water from a burst main and had floated into his leg.
He said more senior officers had arrived at various points in the afternoon, but they decided he was ok to continue working at the scene.
He said he spent around five hours there and left "with the last of the dead".
He said many of his officers were junior, that this had been the first major incident they had attended and he had asked them to do extraordinary things that no one should have to do.
"Seeing to the injured. Applying anything to soak up blood. Helping those who could walk get down to the junction.
"Carrying those who couldn't walk, getting them on board transport to the hospital and then running back up to help the next casualty.
"Later on, helping me to wrap and carry the dead to the alleyway. Remaining with the allocated bodies. Never complaining about what they were being asked to do by me."
Mr Marshall helped six other officers move the bodies to the alleyway. It quickly filled.
"I walked into the alley and it was jammed with dead and there was blood everywhere so basically we just couldn't fit any more in."
Additional bodies were placed in an adjacent shop.
He said he has never entered the alleyway since.
"No, no, no. I tried it once and I just found myself walking between the dead. I just ran. I've never been back," he added.
The inquiry rose for several hours mid morning as a mark of respect to the memory of the mother of a young baby who was murdered in the explosion.
Tracey Devine died on Saturday.
She was the mother of 20-month-old Breda, who was one of the youngest children to have been killed in the explosion.
Ms Devine's funeral took place today.
