Air India inquiry hears rescuers

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Canada's public inquiry into the 1985 Air India bombing has been hearing emotional testimony from rescue workers who pulled human remains from the sea.

All 329 passengers and crew were killed when Flight 182 blew up off the Irish coast after taking off from Montreal.

A long, costly criminal trial last year in the Canadian city of Vancouver ended with the acquittal of the two suspects.

The inquiry cannot revisit the verdict but can try to determine whether Canada bungled part of the investigation.

'Human tragedy'

The inquiry in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, has been hearing from the families of victims and from people who were there in the immediate hours after the plane exploded.

Every day my mind is drawn there - my faith in goodness and God and sense and normality died then Mark StaggMerchant seaman and rescuer

Many of the members of the rescue crews who arrived on the scene were Irish or British and they have been giving their highly personal and emotional accounts of what they experienced.

Briton Mark Stagg was a watch officer on one of the first vessels to reach the wreckage.

He said they were surrounded for miles around by what he called human tragedy.

He described in detail the distressing and difficult task of pulling human remains from the water and he said that 21 years later he has not recovered from the ordeal.

"Every day my mind is drawn there," Mr Stagg said. "My faith in goodness and God and sense and normality died then."

This belated inquiry is one of the first forums for those affected by the tragedy to tell their story and is the result of years of lobbying the Canadian government by the victims' families.