The Omagh Bombing Inquiry is examining whether the single worst atrocity of the Troubles could have been prevented
Twenty-nine people, including a woman expecting twins, were murdered in the Real IRA attack on 15 August 1998
This is the fourth week of hearings
Edited by Conor Neeson. Warning: This page contains distressing details
We are now hearing the written statement of Julian Elliot.
The statement says that he was a sergeant in the custody office in Omagh at the time of the bombing.
He says he was playing football for Maguiresbridge in the morning and heard about the bomb on the radio on his way into work.
He says he was sent to Omagh leisure centre to set up an incident centre.
He says hundred of people started to arrive .
Mr Palmer's closing statement is: "My hope that the information provided, will be helpful to the families and survivors.
"I will never forget the horror of what I witnessed at the scene of the Omagh Bomb.
"The memories and emotions that I carry every day are too much to include in this statement."
He says that when he arrived an Erne Hospital he assisted in bringing injured people into the building.
He says he further assisted by taking casualties out of a helicopter.
He says that a doctor approached him about the wound on his back, which was bleeding through his shirt. He says the doctor told him he needed the injury immediately seen to.
On route to Enniskillen, the police Land Rover ran out of fuel.
"I had to requisition fuel from very helpful staff at a fuel station," he says/
In addition, the Land Rover had poor tyre pressure, making it difficult to drive.
Mr Palmer had to reassure the casualties on the progress they were making on getting to the hospital.
He says that when he arrived at the hospital he was handed the leg of a person wrapped in a blanket.
He says he brought the leg into the A&E department and handed it to a member of the medical team.
He says he was told to bring the injured people he had travelled with to another hospital, Erne Hospital in Enniskillen.
After someone told him that his back was bleeding, Mr Palmer eventually found a police Land Rover to take him to the hospital.
He got into the front passenger seat, in the rear were more casualties.
"One woman had a severe leg wound."
Upon arrival they were told "there is no more room".
He says he saw a woman lying on the ground with the engine of the car on top of her.
He says he saw a man lying in the gutter with his head on fire.
He says: "I moved through this terrible scene trying to assist where I could".
Mr Palmer discovered a child's buggy close to the bomb site, but no child.
He searched for the child, "but to no avail".
Mr Palmer says he came across a young girl who had been injured.
He says he applied a field dressing and applied pressure to the wound until someone else took over.
He says he then moved on to a woman who had an injury to her hand, also applied first aid.
He says he found a woman with no pulse and a severe head injury and blood coming out of her mouth.
He says there was nothing he could do to assist and a colleague put her in a police car to take her to the hospital.
When the bomb exploded Mr Palmer says: "All I can recall is a flash of light, a great suction and a sharp piercing pain in my back".
He described how shards of glass from a shop window hit him in the back.
"I stumbled forward but remained on my feet."
He recalls seeing "all the people lying before me, dead".
"And those who had survived had sustained serious injuries."
Mr Palmer's statement says when he arrived in Omagh he got out of his vehicle and started to stop traffic from entering the town centre.
He then went to notify shop owners of the warning.
He says he cleared shops and put out police tape, moving all pedestrians down towards the bottom of Market Street.
Mr Palmer was tasked to go to Omagh town centre to deal with a bomb warning with a recognised code word 'Martha Pope'.
The warning stated that a bomb had been planted at the courthouse.
We are now going to hear a written statement from Allan Palmer.
In the statement, Mr Palmer says at the time of the bombing he was a police constable attached to Omagh station.
He says he was out on patrol when he received a radio message tasking him to go to Omagh town centre to respond to a bomb warning.
Mr Baxter says the impact of the bomb and subsequent events had such an impact on his wellbeing that he cut his career in the police short.
He says that he left the force in 2003.
This concludes his statement to the inquiry.
Mr Baxter says, with cooperation of the Gardaí (Irish police) and BT, an investigation into the calls led to an arrest in Letterkenny, Donegal.
This individual was responsible for over 70 hoax bomb alerts.
"This arrest ended the campaign of hoax bomb alerts."
Mr Baxter says he was put under enormous pressure to start ignoring these hoax calls and stop evacuating the town centre due to the affect on local businesses.
He says he was "sympathetic" to these requests but refused to agree to a suggestion "on the grounds of public safety".
In the months following, similar bomb warnings, using the same code words as the Omagh Bomb, were received by police.
All were declared hoaxes.
A bomb call on the 13 September 2000 was the 68th bomb alert since the Omagh bombing.
Mr Baxter says these caused "untold stress and anxiety and was further traumatising the Omagh bomb victims and police officers who were evacuating the area".
Mr Baxter says on 23 August 1998 he was in church when he received a message to his pager of a bomb warning at the Omagh courthouse.
He says he immediately left the church and went to Omagh to find the area affected.
He says he spoke to a young female officer involved in the evacuation who he says was "very distressed".
He says she was also involved in the response to the bombing on 15 August.
He says she said to him "Sir, I don't think I can do this anymore".
On top of the many duties which were being carried out, Mr Baxter also needed to provide welfare support for his fellow officers, "who had been traumatised by the bomb explosion".
"I spoke to many who had been involved in evacuating away from the courthouse, where the bomb call related to," he says.
"They then made their way down Market Street, where the bomb detonated."
Many of them "felt guilty and responsible" for moving those members of the public to the area of the bomb blast.
He referred them for professional counselling.
Mr Baxter says he attended to the "urgent" task of getting the bodies of the deceased removed from the temporary mortuary and returned to their families to allow for funerals to take place.
He says he attended many of these funerals.
He adds that the scene of the bomb, still a crime scene, also had to be secured.