“Some of the things I looked at no human being should ever see.”

A DRUMQUIN man has described the harrowing scenes in the immediate aftermath of the Omagh bombing atrocity which claimed the life of his wife.

Philomena Skelton was just 39 when she was killed in the 1998 blast while on a shopping trip with her husband, Kevin.

A well-known campaigner for justice, he provided her commemoration evidence at the public inquiry today at the Strule Arts Centre.

Mr Skelton remembered in detail his life with Philomena and how she had looked after him so well.

A talented knitter, he remembered how she would knit arran jumpers for export to America and provided so well for him.

He added that on the day of the bomb he was working that morning.

He returned home shortly after 12.30pm and then went into Omagh with Philomena and three of their daughters to do some shopping for the new school year in SD Kells, which at that time was located on Market Street.

“I did not think that we walked in past the car and into SD Kells. One of my daughters pointed to the Cavalier,” he said.

“I had gone in a shop and was in it no more than 30 seconds. I turned around to come out of Mr Gees and the bomb went off. I had left Mena, Shauna and one of the other daughters.

“I walked out and went in through the window of SD Kellys which had just been blown up. Mena was lying face down in the rubble. I felt for a pulse and there was none.”

Mr Skelton said that he was ‘fairly sure’ Mena had died. His focus then turned to looking for his daughter, Shauna, who he thought was under her mother. He went on to state that he had been ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

“Some of the things I looked at no human being should ever see. I was there at the wrong place at the wrong time. Things have stayed with me, the smell of burning flesh. I can’t get that out of my head,” he added.

“The cries of people. Nobody asked you whether you were a Catholic or a Protestant or anything else. I thought that Shauna was gone too and I didn’t know where my other two daughters had gone. The way things happened that day my whole family including myself could have been wiped out, except for the one that wasn’t there.

“I can still see the bomb going down the street – in, out, in out. The Kozy Corner bolted like a book, Slevin’s Chemist came out. It was unbelievable and how so many people survived is a mystery to me.”

Mr Skelton said that all he wanted from the public inquiry was the truth about what had happened on that day in 1998. He said that those who were prepared to place a bomb in the busy Market Street in Omagh didn’t care.

“They – the bombers – took everything away. What cause or what dissidents thought they doing or trying to achieve in blowing up women and children is beyond me,” he added.