"The Omagh Bomb Massacre" At 3.10pm on Saturday, August 15th, 1998, a 500Ib car bomb exploded in Market Street, Omagh. It caused carnage on a scale never before seen in Northern Ireland. A total of 29 people were killed, as well as two unborn children, and hundreds were injured in the IRA atrocity. At the time, many felt it was the outrage to end all killings. Sadly, this has not been the case. In Northern Ireland approx. nearly 4,000 have been murdered and killed. On a percentage basis that would be 100,000 people plus, on the mainland. If this had happened on the mainland of Britain would the British government have been so quick to release all of the people who committed these murders and bombings. And given them jobs in Westminister and let them rule over the law abiding community having the power of the law of the land and the structure of the police force? I think not as there would have been a national out-cry. So please think what it is like in Northern Ireland for the peaceful majority. The Victims were:- "There were bodies scattered all over the street; many had been covered, there were body parts, pieces of brain, pieces of arms, pieces of legs, there was a torrent of water flowing down the street, there were electrical cables sparking, there were roof slates falling onto the road nearby. It was a scene from hell. "We pulled over a lady who looked as though she was in her twenties or thirties, turned her over and there was a naked child lying underneath her, the child was had its arms crossed and I made an assessment, hoping that I'd find some sort of life there and pronounced life extinction on her and, as it turned out, her mother. I see their faces, I see their faces daily. I look into my daughter's face and I see the faces of the children I saw that day." Ask yourself, as a normal human being, could you live with that? Or to being an accessory to any part of it? I couldn't.
The RUC constable who helped clear the courthouse area after the bomb exploded said "There was smoke coming from the brow of the hill and we stopped in our tracks for what seemed like an eternity and then just ran towards it. When we reached the brow of the hill there were people everywhere some with blood, others without a scratch. Then there were just bodies everywhere, it was like a war zone, a killing field. I was numbed by the whole thing. I saw a young boy covered in blood and I knelt beside him. I hadn't a clue what to do. There was blood pouring out of him and his eyes stared right through you. I just stopped and stared at some of the sights around me. I couldn't take it in." There was another boy screaming "Mummy, mummy. I just picked him up and sat him on the pavement. People were trying to pull you to help others. I didn't know what to do. People were just looking you to do something. I never felt so alone and helpless." A local councillor said "It was absolute carnage, carnage of the worst I have ever experience because I did 25 years in the fire service through the worst of the years and we had quite a lot of fatalities. But certainly I never experienced anything like it. The carnage was unbelievable - there were bodies everywhere, screaming, a terrible loss of blood, a terrible loss of limbs". A local shop owner said "It was horrible, so much blood and flesh, and glass sticking out of people. I saw a group of four kids and I heard them speaking a foreign language. Spanish, and I thought, in the confusion, they needed more help than anyone else. Two of them were very badly injured with glass in their heads, bellies, arms and necks. Blood was dripping from them. One of the girls was very badly hurt, bleeding from her ears and mouth. She was absolutely covered in glass and kept crying that she was going to die, and all of them were half deaf from the blast. "
Another eye witness said "There was an awful lot of water because there was a burst pipe. There were people lying dead and the water was just gushing over the top of them. The other striking thing was there was so much blood. There was blood literally everywhere, an awful lot of blood on the footpath and on the road. A lot of policemen were splattered from head to toe in blood - and I really mean that. They were putting people who were either dead, badly maimed or injured into sheets or anything they could find and just sort of dragging them down to the bottom end of the town. They were waiting for any available ambulance or car to put the people into." A local woman whose 12yr old and 14 yr old daughters were seriously injured said she carried her injured daughter to one of the buses being used to ferry the dead and injured to hospital. As she waited she recalled how her daughters and herself watched in horror as the dead and injured were pulled from the rubble. She said "There were limbs hanging off, bodies being carried on doors, everything was chaotic. Then just as the bus was about to leave, the door opened and someone handed me a severed arm in. I think that was too much for the driver he cried all the way to the hospital." The ambulance driver later said "It was like a scene from hell. I wasn't able to drive fast because people were screaming in pain. As we went over the ramps at the hospital. I could hear the roars of pain."
Canon John Hay one of the many clerics who ministered to the injured said "I can remember praying with a little boy of 12 who was badly cut, and over his bed was the sign, Traumatic amputation. This was the medical terminology for his right leg being blown off." One relative at the hospital said "I helped carry in the bodies and I even carried a leg off a bus. It had been blown off somebody. I didn't even know who it belonged to. Another fella carried in an arm. There was nowhere to put all the people we were crying, we just laid them on the floor, anywhere, we could find a space." The man later found out his relative, Paul Radford had been killed in the explosion.
The mother of James Barker the 12 year old school boy recalled how when she went to Omagh hospital to identify her son's body. She said "He had a blanket over his body and they didn't want me to look at him, but I had to hold him. I lifted it back and saw the back of his head caved in where he had taken the full force of the explosion." She added "To see him lying there with half his head gone and those beautiful green eyes looking at me was devastating. I never realise how green his eyes were. That image will stay with me the rest of my life."
Lawence will not be attending the service in Omagh's Garden of Remembrance to mark the third anniversary of the out-rage that ripped the market town apart. Instead he will hold a small, private service in the home he shared with Libbi for some of the 40 years they spent together. In the three years since the outrage, Lawrence has lost his business, suffered a nervous breakdown and now relies on state benefits. And, while he has come to some level of acceptance over the cruel loss of his wife, his disgust at the treatment of Omagh's bereaved families is palpable. "I have just received a letter informing me that I am not eligible for compensation, because I was not at the scene of the crime," he said. "It took me 43 hours to find my wife. I opened the back doors of the hospital and it was like the killing fields. "I walked into a corridor 50 yards long, with people lying on each side of it on the floor and I searched every face for her. "I've had to live with that ever since. And what about the families who lost a mother or a child? "We were told our people had no worth. The entire system is an absolute disgrace which defiles the dignity of human beings." The compensation issue is something many families are still struggling with, said Michael Gallagher, of Omagh's Self-help and Support group, who lost his son Adrian in the atrocity. "The tragedy is that we had to go in there and look at what was left - and for some that wasn't much - yet, when it comes to claims for compensation, we are entitled to it," he said. "We never thought that we would be made victims for a second time around, least of all by the Government." Mr Gallagher said the approaching anniversary is a very difficult time, but his group feels it is important they continue to speak out, particularly in the wake of the Ealing bomb. "The justice issue is very much to the fore, as the people who carried out Omagh are still going about their daily business as we saw in London, so we must speak out to try and prevent another Omagh," he said.
Godfrey lost his 15-year daughter, Lorraine, who was working in the town's Oxfam shop and his son Gary, was robbed of his girlfriend, Samantha McFarland. "It's tragic that 31 souls were lost and democracy doesn't play a part - all the politicians are doing is bowing down to the people with the guns, while we're struggling with broken hearts," he said. "It's not easy going on, but you have to, for the sake of the rest of your family. "But, in my heart, I don't feel that between the Good Friday Agreement and agreements with terrorists, that we are getting anywhere." Like the relatives of other victims, Godfrey is incensed that not action has been taken against the suspected bombers - and feels they must be seen to be punished for their crime. "The security men know who these people are - they are bound to have the technology which will enable them to take these people out of society," he said. "I would like to see them doing life for life, but I have very little faith in the system at the minute. "They seem to be taken in, slapped on the wrists and let out to roam free. Surely these people should be picked up now. "But from what I hear, most of them were given compensation to move into new places. To my ears that's just pure hypocrisy."
One of the Omagh Bombers is jailed The only person to be convicted in connection with the Omagh bombing has been sentenced to 14 years in jail at the Special Criminal Court in the Republic of Ireland. Colm Murphy, 49, was found guilty on Tuesday of conspiracy to cause an explosion. The blast - later admitted by the so called Real IRA - killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injured hundreds on 15 August 1998. It was the worst single atrocity in 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. Murphy, a builder and publican originally from south Armagh, denied one charge of conspiring to cause an explosion likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property between August 13 and 16, 1998. |
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