A couple caught up in the Manchester attack told of the harrowing moment they helped a badly injured teenager while desperately searching for their own two daughters.
Phil and Kim Dick were just 30 yards away from the explosion in the arena foyer at the end of the Ariana Grande concert on Monday night, they told Channel 4 News.
The couple had become separated from their children and were frantically trying to get in touch with them when they came across 14-year-old Freya, who had suffered serious injuries.
Kim stayed with the youngster while Phil searched for their own children, before Kim managed to make contact with daughter Tammy on the phone.
The pair described being able to smell ‘burning flesh and burning hair’ before coming across Freya ‘staggering like a puppet on a string’.
Phil said: “We used a trestle table as a stretcher to carry her down the stairs to paramedics.”
Kim said she had kept in touch with Freya’s dad throughout the day and that the teenager had undergone several operations.
In a moving statement of defiance, Phil said: “It’s an absolutely terrible thing and I just pray to God that none of these extremists try and make political capital out of it.
“The last thing anyone needs now is any more divisiveness. Terrorists want to try and divide us and affect our way of life.
“There are people who want to use these kind of incidents for their own political ends. They are almost as bad as the bombers.”