SHOPPERS, including families with small children in buggies, flocked back into the side streets around the Olympic Centennial Park yesterday, undeterred by Saturday morning's bomb, said Eric Luke, an Irish Times photographer in Atlanta covering the games. People seemed determined not to let the explosion affect the carnival atmosphere of the games.

Mr Luke was only a few minutes' walk away, processing film at the Fuji offices, when the explosion occurred at 1.25 am. on Saturday. "We heard the bang. It was really like a thud. The windows moved so we knew it was a bomb.

"I ran straight out and down to the scene, but there was panic everywhere. People were running away but there were also people running towards it, spectators who wanted to see what happened. They weren't too concerned because they thought it was a transformer."

It was some time before word emerged that there had been an 18 minute bomb warning. "The police took control very quickly and had been trying to move the crowds back for some minutes before the explosion," Mr Luke said.

Eventually everyone, press photographers included, were pushed back from the park and anyone who argued was in danger of arrest. The whole area was closed down by the authorities, including the transport system.

Mr Luke described the bomb as small "nothing like the bombs in Dublin" in 1974. There was no devastation and no damage to buildings even windows in the immediate vicinity were left intact.

The bomb was in three pipes inside a knapsack placed at the bottom of a lighting and control tower for the band, Jack Mack and the Heart Attack, which was performing in the park at the time.

The woman who died, Ms Alice Hawthorne (44), was 125 feet away from the blast and died of "multiple penetration by flying fragments". Many people much nearer suffered only minor injuries, said Mr Luke.

The other fatality was a TV cameraman, Mr Melih Uzunyol, from Turkey. He died of a heart attack while trying to reach the scene of the bomb.

Mr Luke says other photographers, like himself, had to return to the Fuji processing centre as the streets around the park were sealed off.

While police and other security agencies were still minutely examining the scene of the bombing yesterday the carnival atmosphere returned and people were enjoying themselves a few yards away.