Some casualties of the Manchester Arena bombing had to wait more than three-and-a-half hours before they were dispatched to hospital, the inquiry into the atrocity has heard.
The North West Ambulance Service operations manager who was allocated as the 'casualty clearing officer' on the night of the attack, James Birchenough, said time had to be spent triaging and stabilising patients before putting them into ambulances, although he accepted more staff would have speeded up the process.
The triage process was 'brutal' and 'goes against every ethos of being a paramedic and of care' but it was important to assess casualties to decide who were the most seriously injured, he said.
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