'What did it achieve?' - Emergency Medical Technician recalls the Omagh Bomb, 20 years on

A paramedic who helped with the aftermath of the Omagh Bomb has said he still does not know what those responsible hoped to achieve.

Dungannon man John Taylor spoke to Downtown Radio/Cool FM news as part of a series of interviews with people who were there on Saturday 15 August 1998.

The bomb would claim the lives of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins and left hundreds of others injured.

Mr Taylor responded to an emergency call on that fateful day and helped identify the dead as well as helping those left wounded among the rubble.,

He said there are images that will never leave him.

"When I looked up the street, I thought it was snowing," he said.

"But I realised it was all the insulation from the roofs of the buildings.

"It was sparkling and it wouldn't stop coming down."

However, there were darker, more troubling sights on Market Street that day.

It was John and his fellow EMTs' responsibility to help confirm the dead.

"I remember looking up the street and seeing what was quite obviously a young boy and hoping that I didn't actually have to go up and take the cover off him," he said.

"But I had to and he seemed to have just these new boots or something on him, I can see them, they were a bright colour.

"He'd maybe just got them that day and he just looked as if he was sleeping.

"He was lovely, a lovely lad."

Only when he got home that night, was John able to start to process what he had witnessed and what the people of Omagh had been through.

"My head was busting and I couldn't wait to get home," he said.

"I had to go out that night and I remember going to the bath and when I was getting out I had sat in the bath until it got cold.

"I had sat in the bath and I'd cried and cried and cried, I just couldn't stop crying."

Mr Taylor still works part time as an EMT, but when he looks back on the carnage of that fateful day 20 years ago, he said he still can't fathom why it happened.

"What was it all for, really, what did it achieve?"

• omagh bomb
• Omagh