Not screams, but broken cries and whispers told the immensity of the horror. The soundtrack and images of three amateur videos held the occupants of the inquest hall in Omagh transfixed yesterday.
Each video just a few minutes in duration, they evoked shock and an intense emotional reaction even though sections of them had been broadcast previously on TV networks and have become all too familiar.
Within moments, the inquest hearing turned from clinical legal argument to a hushed gathering watching and hearing the carnage and confusion of the Omagh bombing atrocity.
Most of the relatives of the victims, alerted in advance by inquest officials, had left the auditorium with its large suspended screens on which the videos were shown. Some relatives went to a private family room for mutual support as they watched the tragic and graphic material. Others withdrew completely, choosing not to watch at all.
The sequences were sometimes blurred and patchy, but powerful. One camera tracked along the side windows of a rescue vehicle, picking up in turn the mutilated faces of the wounded inside. Another lingered on the smoke cloud and the throng of people, injured and uninjured mingled randomly, who stumbled, ran or knelt to give assistance to the fallen.
In the background soundtrack of one video a stunned male voice intoned a kind of litany in a distinct Australian accent: "You just would not believe this. You would not believe what f. . .ing happened. You would not f. . .ing believe it."
Later yesterday, when the hearing adjourned, a few relatives - at their own request - faced the media to explain their reactions.
Mr Michael Gallagher, who lost his son, Adrian, said those who had chosen to go to the family room to watch jointly had felt they wanted to be together in supporting each other.
Some of the material had been very difficult to watch and there were some family members who had really needed assistance. "My first thought was, how could somebody stand there and video a scene like that. But now I'm glad they did - everybody in the country should see the videos and see the true horror." Mr Stanley McCombe, whose wife, Ann, died in the bombing, said he had not watched the videos and, from the reaction of other families, he was glad he did not.
However, he hoped the showing would help force the politicians, North and South, to "get their act together - they should get their special powers or whatever, get these people [the bombers], make them pay for what they done". Ms Marion Radford, who lost her son, Alan (17), said: "I can't comprehend how one human being could do that to others. I'm not bitter, but I do want justice. I think when I go home tonight and really think about it I could get into a really despairing mood."
Ms Radford said she coped "by just switching off. I switched off when the bomb went off. Maybe I've not switched on again".
One video, probably the most disturbing, was made by Mr Patrick McElhatton (59), who went to the scene from his home in nearby Fintona when he heard the explosion. He had his video camera set up at the time because of a job he was about to do for Fintona Cycling Club, of which he is president.
Outside the hearing yesterday, he told reporters he filmed the scene for less than four minutes. "Then I asked myself, what am I doing this videoing for. But then came the idea that it would be sent across the world and seen." He added: "I won't walk down that street now. Whenever you see something like that, you know it's all there still - everything is the same. I wish I was never there." The harrowing video and sound material were the dominant feature of yesterday's morning session in the hall at the Omagh Leisure Centre. The coroner, Mr John Leckey, extended the lunch hour by 30 minutes afterwards in deference to the families who had watched what he described as "those dreadful scenes".
Counsel to the coroner cautioned that there will be more disturbing images today, when a series of still photographs of the bombing scene are shown.