Mr McSwiggan said there were people in the crater, including one person with severe injuries who had been left naked by the force of the explosion, and another who had severe stomach lacerations.
Mr McSwiggan said he was eventually able to phone his mother, who was a nurse, to tell her about the bomb and that she and her colleagues would be needed at the hospital.
He told the inquiry that his mother returned from hospital later that weekend and said she had treated someone she knew who “hadn’t a tooth left in their head”.
He said: “The idea that you could be in your local town on a Saturday afternoon and everyone was rounded up and killed in front of you, and nobody really knows why, or how, or who did it, and you are supposed to just go on with your life and never mention it again; attempting to rationalise that just never allowed me to sit right with the world.”.
David McSwiggan told the Omagh Bombing Inquiry that he had repeatedly returned to the scene of devastation immediately after the blast to search for his missing friends.
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