Greater Manchester Fire has released footage of the aftermath of the IRA bomb that blew up in Manchester city centre on 16 June 1996.
212 people were injured when the explosion ripped through Corporation Street at 11.17am, near what is now Exchange Square.
Seeing the destruction on film it is incredible that no-one died.
More unseen footage, and the stories of those who were there, will be released to mark 20 years since the bomb blast this summer.
The IRA claimed responsibility for the attack, parking a van underneath a footbridge in the shopping centre of the city and detonating a 1,500kg device.
It is still the largest to be deliberately exploded on British soil since the end of the Second World War.
One of the only structures left intact on Corporation Street was a red pillar box – which remains there to this day.
The footage shows streets caked in dust, debris and broken tiles and pavement slabs as rescue and clean-up crews scour the city centre.
Firefighters and rescuers were tasked with the harrowing job or searching under tonnes of rubble for potential fatalities and survivors.
Life would change forever in Manchester as the dust settled on the homegrown terror attack.
It emerged that £1.2 billion of damage was done by the blast.
Images archived at Salford Fire Station on Liverpool Road were released in June 2014 to comemmorate the 18th anniversary of the bomb blast.
The pictures were taken by Greater Manchester Fire Service officers as they picked their way through the devastation.
Windows were smashed through with the immense force of the shockwave and rubble was thrown some half a mile from the centre of the explosion, which damaged a third of the entire city’s retail space.
No-one has ever been charged in connection with the bomb blast.
All images: Greater Manchester Fire/Flickr
