Omagh Bombing: Blast killed 14 women and nine children

OMAGH WILL be remembered as the bomb that massacred women and children, it became clear yesterday as the identities of the casualties emerged.

Fourteen women, five men and nine children met their deaths. They included three generations of one family: a woman heavily pregnant with twins, her mother and her 18-month-old baby.

The dead boys included three from the seaside town of Buncrana, over the border in Co Donegal in the Irish Republic, whose families had been playing host to a group of Spanish exchange schoolchildren; hosts and guests were on a visit to the Omagh carnival.

Two of the Buncrana boys were neighbours: Sean McLaughlin, 12, and Oran Doherty, eight. The third was boy was James Barker, 12, son of a solicitor whose family moved to Buncrana from England about a year ago. A 12-year- old Spanish boy, Fernando Blasco, and one of his teachers, Rosia Abad, aged 24, both from Madrid, also met their deaths.

Four dead boys and three dead girls had been formally identified by yesterday evening; two other children were awaiting identification.

In all the carnage, the Grimes family bore the heaviest single toll. Avril Monaghan, 30, her 18-month-old daughter Maura, and her mother, Mary Grimes, 65, were on a shopping trip to Omagh when the bomb exploded and killed them all.

Mrs Monaghan, from the small village of Aughadarna, a few miles outside the town, was survived by her husband, Michael, and two daughters and a son, the oldest of whom is six. Mrs Grimes, a mother of 12, was from Beragh where her husband, Mick, is a farmer.

The Catholic Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Sean Brady, who visited the families yesterday, said they were too distressed to speak publicly of their loss. Mr Grimes's brother James is a priest in Whitecross, his archdiocese, the archbishop said, adding: "The family are just totally devastated. They are just so shocked."

Behind every death lies a devastated family. The Logue family's walk home in the rain, with a quiet dignity in their sorrow, was repeated many many times in Omagh yesterday. From the leisure centre, which has been turned into a place of information and counselling for the bereaved, to Tyrone County Hospital to the morgue they walked, sometimes weeping, sometimes in silence holding each other's hands.

The Logue family are republican and vote Sinn Fein. Brenda, 17, was a promising athlete and Gaelic football goalkeeper. On Saturday she was out shopping with her mother, Mary, and grandmother, Philomena. She went into Kells, a clothing store, when the bomb went off. Her mother and grandmother survived, but Brenda was killed.

Her father Tommy, waiting at the leisure centre yesterday morning, said: "I knew all along. The front of the shop had been blown out, no one could have survived that." Her older brother Sean, 20, cried as he said: "I loved her to bits. Now she is with God."

It was no less terrible for families of those who had been maimed. Twelve- year-old Alastair Hall was out shopping with his mother Gwen for a pair of school trousers when the blast took place. He was taken to a hospital in Londonderry, where he is coming to terms with the loss of a leg. At the family home his father, Lindsay Hall, produced a 1991 World Cup rugby jersey. "Look at this. Alastair loved to play, now he won't be able to do that again. For God's sake, he was only 12, I am 57, why couldn't it have been me?"

He has two other sons, both of whom were yesterday flying home. Michael, 21, is returning from Edinburgh; Gareth,19, from the US.

Kevin Skelton is a widower at the age of 43, having lost his wife Philomena, 39. She was out shopping with three daughters, trying to get one a school uniform from the Kells shop at the time of the explosion.

He said yesterday: "I saw my wife. She was lying on top of the rubble, she was face down and some of the clothing had blown off her ..." His voice faded.

After a while he continued: "I felt her pulse, and knew she was dead. But I have had to wait for almost 13 hours to hear this officially."

Anita Sharkey, 17, was at a dry-cleaning shop when "the whole place shook terribly". She recalled: "I saw a lady with blood all over her face. She had blood on her eye, and I took a tea-towel to her face and wiped away the blood. Then I could not see the eye, I think she has lost it. I did not know what to do, what can you do?"

Miss Sharkey, who suffered injuries to her shoulder, described how the shop owner dragged curtains from inside to use to cover-up the bodies.