The signing of the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998 made peace in Northern Ireland a real possibility. But not everyone welcomed the prospect of an end to the unrest.
The Real IRA paramilitary faction viewed the agreement as a betrayal and planned a campaign of violence to destroy any chance of a lasting peace.
On August 13, a red Vauxhall Cavalier was stolen from outside a block of flats in County Monaghan, Ulster, setting off a chain of events that would culminate in the worst single terrorist attack in the history of the riots.
Police officers and firefighters from the Royal Ulster Constabulary inspect the damage caused by a bomb blast in Market Street, Omagh, Co Tyrone
Saturday, August 15, 1998 at 10 a.m
It’s a sunny day in the Northern Irish city of Omagh and the streets are packed with shoppers, most of whom have traveled from nearby villages to buy school uniforms for the new school year and to watch a carnival parade in the afternoon.
Authorities are on high alert because on Wednesday an informant named Kevin Fulton contacted his CID officer to warn him that the group was “about to move somewhat north in the next few days” and that he was a member of the group hit that smelled fertilizer – an important ingredient in bombs.
CID passed the information to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Force Intelligence Bureau, which in turn passed it on to the Special Branch. The Special Department later claimed they never received this extremely important piece of information. RUC officers on the ground in Omagh are unaware of a threat.
10.30 a.m
Across the border, in the Irish town of Buncrana, Bernie Doherty says goodbye to her eight-year-old son, Oran. He is going to Omagh for the day with his cousin Emmet and some Spanish students who are in Buncrana on an exchange trip.
Bernie was initially reluctant to let Oran go as he is so young, but felt it wasn’t fair on him as he hadn’t been anywhere all summer.
Bernie tells Oran to watch his money and stay with the other boys. She watches him walk down the hill until Oran is out of sight. “I was just scared to let him go,” she later said.
An RUC officer walks past the wrecked prams at the site of the Omagh blast
2:19 p.m
On Market Street in central Omagh, the stolen red Vauxhall Cavalier pulls up outside the SD Kells textile shop. The front of the car is raised because there is a heavy load in the trunk.
In England, intelligence officers from GCHQ monitor the mobile phones of members of the Real IRA suspected of detonating a car bomb in County Down two weeks ago and hear the phrase “The bricks are in the wall”: code for a bomb, in the position to be inserted.
The same code was used in the County Down bombing. The RUC has no idea that this surveillance is taking place.
Two men get out of the Cavalier; One catches the eye of a young woman in a nearby car and grins at her. She later said they were neatly dressed and “looked like soldiers”.
The men carefully close the car doors and walk away. Inside the van is a 500-pound bomb made of fuel oil, fertilizer and Semtex explosives.
2.30 p.m
A production assistant in the newsroom at Ulster Television answers the phone. A man mentions a well-known Real IRA code word: “Martha Pope” (the name of an assistant to US Envoy Senator George Mitchell) and then says, “There’s a bomb.” Omagh Courthouse. Main road. 500 pounds. Explosion 30 minutes.’
The production assistant immediately calls the police in Belfast. Shortly thereafter, another man calls the Samaritans in Omagh, but his call is diverted to their office in Coleraine. “Am I through with Omagh? This is a bomb alert. In 30 minutes it will start in the center of Omagh. Martha Pope. “Main street about 200 meters from the courthouse.”
A distraught woman walking from the site of a major bomb attack on the shopping district of the northern Irish city of Omagh on August 15
2:35 p.m
A third call is made again to the Ulster Television newsroom: “Martha Pope.” 15 minutes. Bomb. Omagh Town.’
In Omagh, RUC officers on patrol are radioed: “There is a bomb alert from about three different locations.” Take a walk and look for cars that appear to be well loaded.
The RUC begins evacuating the area around the courthouse, sending people down Market Street – unknowingly toward the bomb. Everyone is quiet and assumes that it is a scam. Employees in an office refuse to leave their desks.
2.40 p.m
Kevin Skelton, 43, and his wife Philomena, 39, are at Kelly’s newsagent on Market Street with their teenage daughters Paula, Shauna and Tracey, buying pencils and pens. Philomena only comes to Omagh twice a year to shop – at Christmas and in August to get the children’s school supplies and uniforms.
A policeman comes into the store and asks her to walk down the street because of the bomb scare. Kevin is tired and suggests they all go home, but Philomena says they need to get the girls new shoes.
3:08 p.m
The carnival floats are being diverted away from the city center where police have decided to move their cordoned off area even further away from the courthouse. The audience moves even closer to the red Vauxhall. The car is ignored as the bomb is believed to be near the courthouse across the street.
Staff at family outfitter Watterson’s are evacuated from an exit at the back of the store. But Veda Short, an employee for more than 20 years, is on his lunch break and is also standing outside on Market Street. A few hours ago Veda met her new grandson Lee who was born this morning.
One of the teachers from Spain who is leading the exchange trip, Gonzalo Cavedo, 23, poses for a photo with a child on his shoulders. Fellow teacher Rocio Abad Ramos, 23, takes the photo. The red Vauxhall is just a few meters behind Gonzalo.
Police officers stand on Market Street, the scene of a car bomb attack in central Omagh, Co Tyrone, 72 miles west of Belfast, Northern Ireland
3:09 p.m
Philomena Skelton and her daughters Shauna and Tracey are in the SD Kells cloth shop looking for school shoes. Her husband Kevin decides not to join them. “I got to the top of the stairs and I said to myself, ‘Three women in a shop? I’m going for a walk somewhere else.’
When Kevin enters the store next door, he stops and realizes that he has to give Philomena money for the shoes.
3:10 p.m
Suddenly the bomb explodes. Kevin later said, “I saw the blast moving down the street and bouncing off every building.” “Businesses fell like a deck of cards.” Twenty-one people are killed instantly, including new grandmother Veda Short and teacher Rocio Abad ramos
There is silence for a split second, then the screams begin. Merchant dolls from clothing stores lie on the street with the injured and dying.
3:11 p.m
Kevin Skelton runs to the remains of the cloth mill. “I went in through where the window would have been and found the woman lying face down in the rubble.” Her clothes were blown off her and the first thing I grabbed was her arm and me tried to feel her pulse – there was no life left. I knew she was dead.’
Kevin can’t see his daughters anywhere. Seven people died in the textile shop alone, and two others died when they were blown through the windows.
The devastation wreaked in Omagh when a terrorist bomb exploded at the corner of Market Street and Dublin Road in Omagh in 1998
3:12 p.m
Furniture store worker Jolene Jamison was thrown into the street and looks around in shock. “There was broken glass everywhere — dead bodies, kids.” People were inside out.”
A police officer running down the hill from the courthouse said: “It was like a war zone, a battlefield.”
Sparks fly from electric wires and streams of water pour down the street from a burst water main. Local carpenter John King watches the water wash body parts down the street. “It’s something you never forget.” They just piled up on the corner where the gully was and bits of legs, arms, whatever, were floating down the street.”
3:15 p.m
Omagh’s nearest hospital, Tyrone County, is calling out nurses and doctors who are off duty. Driving instructor Frank Pancott, 50, tries to help a man whose hair is still on fire and tells him, ‘Hold on to your life, don’t give up.’
Local mechanic Gordon Smith has a video camera as he planned to film his children at the carnival. Instead, he films the rescue operation: the dazed victims stagger through the street and the bodies are carried away.
Gordon said, “The video veiled the horror for me.” But I’ll never forget what I saw that day, both before I started filming and when I literally couldn’t film anymore. When I saw all those bodies being ripped to pieces, I finally realized how serious this all was.”
A soldier guards the site of the bomb attack in the shopping district of Omagh in Northern Ireland on August 16, 1998
3.30 p.m
In the remains of SD Kells’ store, Kevin Skelton watches as a firefighter lifts Philomena’s arm up and then drops it again. The police then tells everyone to walk down the street as there may be another bomb. Kevin recalled, “I didn’t bother about another bombshell.” “All I cared about was finding my daughters.”
Across the border, in Buncrana, two of Bernie Doherty’s nephews run into the house and tell her that when they checked the teletext for the football scores they saw that there had been a bomb in Omagh. Fearing that her son Oran might get hurt, she runs to her house to check teletext herself.
3.40 p.m
People dig in the rubble with their bare hands to rescue those trapped.
Someone got Pampers diapers from a local pharmacy and is using them to stem a victim’s blood flow. Others have found sheets to wrap the dying and injured who are carried to buses and cars to take them to the hospital. The security forces cordon off the crime scene with armored Land Rovers, while army helicopters rattle overhead.
3:45 p.m
Catholic priest Father Kevin Mullen wades through six inches of water from the ruptured main line while administering last rites to the dying. He cries while he prays.
Meanwhile, Captain Sam Potter of the Royal Army Medical Corps is doing what he can. He later said, “I see their faces, I see their faces daily.” “I look into my daughter’s face and I see the faces of the children that I saw that day.”
David Trimble, Prime Minister of the Assembly of Northern Ireland (third from left) walks with delegates through the rubble on the street of the Northern Ireland city of Omagh August 17, 1998
4 p.m
Bus driver Michael McNally, 40, was driving into Omagh from the depot when he heard the explosion. He is now taking the injured to Tyrone County Hospital. In the front seat sits a small boy, rigid with fear, staring straight ahead. His mother keeps screaming, “He’s going to bleed to death!”
Michael said, “I couldn’t drive fast because people were screaming in pain.” I could only go about 30 miles an hour. As we walked the ramps at the hospital, I could hear the roar of pain.”
4:15 p.m
Tyrone County Hospital is already full of injured people calling for help or something for the pain. There are so many, some lying on mattresses in the hallways. A volunteer nurse later said, “You couldn’t really be trained for what you saw unless you were trained in Vietnam or somewhere similar.” Some hospital workers are treating their own children.
5:10 p.m
Kevin Skelton has found his daughters Tracey and Paula but the youngest, Shauna, is still missing. Then a man across the street calls out to him, “Do you have a little girl with redhead hair?” Kevin calls back, “I did,” since he is convinced Shauna is dead. But the man yells, “No, she’s in the hospital!”
Kevin recalled, “When I turn 100, I’ll never forget those two hours—walking around not knowing if they were alive or dead and the smell of burned flesh.”
Kevin drives to Omagh Hospital to find Shauna badly injured with a broken jaw but alive. Philomena took the full force of the explosion and saved her daughter’s life.
5.30 p.m
The Tyrone County Hospital morgue was built before the riots and can only accommodate three bodies. A makeshift morgue is being set up in a portable building at a nearby British Army barracks.
Flowers are quickly placed on stands in every corner and red curtains draped over the walls. Army helicopters take the seriously injured to hospital in Belfast. Local taxi drivers are providing free rides to the desperate families.
Security forces continue to investigate the site of the Omagh bomb on August 17, two days after the blast
6 p.m
Across the border in Buncrana, the families of the children who have traveled to Omagh are desperate for information, but telephone lines were damaged by the blast.
Bernie Doherty is at her sister’s house awaiting word from her son Oran when they learn that her nephew Emmet is in hospital in Enniskillen with shrapnel removed. Bernie panics, so her husband Mickey decides to go to Omagh with the parents of other missing children.
Deputy Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Seamus Mallon stands in the rubble of Market Street and tells the waiting press that it is the worst bloodbath he has ever witnessed. “I just saw adult police officers in their uniforms covered in blood and crying.”
8 p.m
Gwen Hall is in a bed at County Hospital. She and her son Alistair, 12, were shopping in Omagh when the bomb went off. Although Gwen’s injuries are not serious, Alistair has lost a leg.
A few days later, Gwen writes an open letter to the Real IRA that begins sarcastically: “To the brave boys who ripped Omagh’s heart out.” I’ll probably never know who you are – but you know it. We and all other victims of your ambush last Saturday would like to know: “Why?”
“I went to hell and back laying bruised in rubble water and blood not knowing if my 12-year-old son was alive or dead.” I wish you could have heard that child cry inconsolably yesterday as she was dealing with the pain of his severed limb. You may have broken the bodies of the people of Omagh, but you can never break their spirits. You can run, but you can’t hide.’
23 o’clock
A team of 50 firefighters is still searching through the rubble. An emergency center has been set up at the Omagh Leisure Center and hundreds of people are awaiting news of missing loved ones.
Only five of the dead are identifiable, so the search for families has been slow. When new lists of the injured are posted on the walls of Omagh, Enniskillen and Belfast hospitals, relatives rush over and frantically scan the names. Bernie Doherty’s husband Mickey calls the recreation center and tells her there’s still no news from Oran. He reassures her, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take the little man home.’ I’ll find him.’
Police stand in the rubble after a car bomb that exploded in the market town of Omagh, Northern Ireland, on August 15, 1998, killing 29 people
Sunday, August 16, 7 a.m
Bernie Doherty looks out the window of her sister’s house to see friends of the McLaughlin family, whose son Sean is also missing, hugging. Bernie says to her sister, “You know there’s something going on, they have some news.”
Bernie runs outside and finds that Sean was killed in the bombing. At that moment the phone rings and it is her husband Mickey who breaks the news that Oran is dead. Bernie throws the phone on the floor.
9 am
A Mail reporter speaks to a British soldier who guards Market Street and has seen atrocities in Sarajevo. “Now it’s happened right here at home,” he says.
Forensic scientists use heat detectors to inspect destroyed buildings for any bodies that may have been overlooked. The Mail on Sunday’s headline this morning reads ‘Bloody Saturday’.
6 p.m
Bernie Doherty has arrived at the Army Barracks’ makeshift morgue to see Oran’s body. She recalled, “All I remember is his eyes wide open, like he was looking up, and whatever his little bottom lip was like, to me it looked like he was crying when he died.”
A week later, Bernie receives a letter from a young girl stating that she held Oran’s hand and that he did not die alone.
Pictured are some of the victims of the Omagh bombings. Top row, from left: James Barker, Esther Gibson, Sean McGrath, Gareth Conway, Elizabeth Rush, Fred White, Lorraine Wilson. Bottom row, from left: Veda Short, Alan Radford, Bryan White, Brenda Logue, Deborah Cartwright, Geraldine Breslin, Oran Doherty
aftermath
The Omagh bombing killed 29 people, including a woman who was pregnant with twins, and injured more than 200. A total of 30 children lost their mothers.
Three days after the atrocity, the Real IRA claimed responsibility, saying its aims were “commercial” and apologizing to the “civilian” victims. It quickly became clear that the Omagh bombing did not derail the peace process, but only made politicians more determined to succeed.
In October 2000, the Chron launched a fight fund to assist victims’ families in civil lawsuits against Real IRA suspects. In June 2009, the families won a £1.6million civil suit against four men blamed for the bombing, but the four remained at large and did not pay a dime. Seamus Daly was charged with murder but his case was dropped in 2016.
Years later, Kevin Skelton, who lost his wife Philomena, said: “That day in Omagh, in the screams I heard from 3:10 p.m., nobody came by and asked if you were Catholic or Protestant.” The blood spilled the same color the street and the cries of pain all sounded the same.
‘I can’t understand the mentality of people who would plant a bomb in the middle of a busy city.’ It doesn’t take a brave man.’