Omagh bombing: what happened and who was responsible?

Relatives at the funeral of Omagh bombing victim James
Barker

Prince Charles is on a two-day trip to Omagh to meet survivors
and families of victims of the 1998 car bomb that claimed 29
lives.

The Prince of Wales today opened the new Omagh Hospital and
Primary Care Complex and met medics who treated people caught in
the blast, ITV News reports reports.

As the Northern Ireland town prepares to mark the 20th
anniversary of the bombing, The Week examines the events around the
attack. 

What happened in Omagh?

A car bomb exploded in a crowded shopping area in the centre of
the town on 15 August 1998, killing 29 people and injuring 220
more. Nine children and two unborn babies were among the dead.

It was the greatest single loss of life in any terror atrocity
during the Troubles and almost derailed the Good Friday peace
agreement, signed earlier that year.

A warning had been called in 40 minutes before the attack, but
authorities got the location wrong, the BBC reports.

“Police had begun to evacuate the area but were actually
shepherding people towards the site of the explosion,” the
broadcaster says. “Those who thought they had reached safety were
instead caught up in the most devastating single atrocity of
Northern Ireland’s Troubles.”

Who was responsible?

The bombing was carried out by members of the Real Irish
Republican Army (Real IRA), a group of renegade IRA members opposed
to the peace process.

In the days following the attack, the group apologised,
insisting that civilians had not been the target.

No one has been criminally convicted of the bombing.

However, the Omagh Support and Self Help Group, representing the
victims’ relatives, successfully sued four republicans, who were
found liable for the bombing at a civil trial.

There have been “long-standing allegations that intelligence and
investigative failures by authorities on both sides of the border
allowed the bombers to both carry out the crime and get away with
it”, Sky News reports.

In August last year, relatives of the victims announced that
they would sue George Hamilton, the chief
constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, for
failings that they believe allowed the culprits to walk free. They
are suing the current police chief because he has legal
responsibility for the actions of both his service and its
predecessor, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, explains the
Belfast Telegraph.

Michael Gallagher, who lost his son, Aiden, in the bombing,
said: “We need to know why they have failed so spectacularly
on the worst atrocity of the Troubles, even though the atrocity was
in peacetime.

“What we want is for the people behind this crime to be put in
jail.”