TERROR STALKS TRAGIC STREETS
Terror stalks tragic streets
HEARTS all over the world went out to the people of Tyrone when a Real IRA bomb ripped through bustling Omagh on a Saturday afternoon, plunging hundreds of lives into misery.
When US President Bill Clinton, Prince Charles, Prime Minister Tony Blair and other VIPs, after mourning along with the stricken people,
finally left there was an unwritten agreement among everyone to leave the town in solitude to privately come to terms with its inestimable grief. It wasn't to be.
Today, just a little over a month on, terror still stalks the streets of Omagh and innocent people are being intimidated.
IAN STARRETT reports
THERE is no better place to find solace in the wake of human loss than in the presence of God.
To kneel or sit in a place of worship in contemplative player provides, even sometimes for the non-churchgoer, a serenity of mind and soul that is welcome at a time of grief.
Yet not even before an altar has there been peace for the people of bomb-blitzed Omagh.
They were praying in several churches, close to where the bomb that has claimed 29 lives and maimed physically and mentally hundreds more, had exploded, when the first of the hoax calls had been made.
The churches had to be evacuated, sending Sunday worshippers, for whom the memory of Saturday, August 15 was still all too real, fleeing in terror once again.
Omagh has suffered even more since. Last Saturday, and again on Tuesday, Omagh was hit by warped individuals who triggered terror among thousands by simply lifting a telephone.
Oliver Gibson, who lost his niece in the Omagh atrocity, yesterday claimed that the bomb scare tactics are part of a new republican terror strategy.
He said: "A hoax bomb on a Sunday at churchtime has its own desperate and peculiar effects.
"A double bomb scare on Saturday sent everyone screaming with horror from one end of Omagh to the other. Children, mothers, ordinary shoppers, pensioners, all felt the great threat in a highly charged atmosphere.
"Then on Tuesday around 3,000 children left Omagh at 3.30pm with exactly the same message. This calculated strategy is to spread dread, threat and unending fear into every home.
"The unabated terror pressure on Omagh town still persists."
Now, says Mr Gibson, the pressure is being switched by the evil exponents of terror to the rural areas.
He declines to even hint at the identity of them -and considering how many Protestants have died by bullet or bomb along the Tyrone/Donegal border that is understandable - but he says that isolated Protestant families in the rural areas around Omagh are being bluntly told to "get out".
Mr Gibson said: "All of this is a silent but deadly spread of terror.
"It's a serious effort to drive business out of Omagh and also to contrive ethnic, cleansing by removing by threat the remaining Protestant families from areas where they are in a small minority.
"The IRA has not gone away and there is no peace in Omagh or its hinterland. In fact the pressure of terror has increased. All of the community feels continuously threatened."
The intimidated people living in the lonely Tyrone farmsteads, he said, are feeling very insecure.
They live amid countryside that is a magnificent example of the Creator's handiwork - not for nothing is the place known as "Tyrone among the bushes" - but it is the past bloodletting by the Devil's disciples that has struck fear into Protestant homes dotted across the rustic landscape.
Some of the victims of anonymous calls and muttered threats haven't even told the RUC, hoping against hope that the undercurrent of danger to their lives will ebb with time's passing.
As well as receiving telephone threats they claim that some republicans, knowing that they are Protestants, ignore them and don't speak to them.
It's a Cold War that's difficult to deal with, impossible to understand, yet chilling to the marrow.
Mr Gibson said he believed that the cruel hoax threats are "well planned, orchestrated".
He said: "Omagh used to be a bustling, thriving, nice country town but this has put the whole kibosh on it.
"Now Omagh is filled with apprehension, tension and fear because the republican terror campaign is continuing here.
"After the bomb and the visits by the Prime Minister, Prince Charles and the US President we said 'let's get back to full gear again' but now the reality has been kicking in. The IRA has not gone away as far as Omagh is concerned."
Mr Gibson said that according to information he has received the entire IRA East Tyrone and South Armagh brigades have joined up with the Real IRA.
"As well the Donegal Brigade I believe is 50-50 divided and there are bubbles of discontent among the brigade in Londonderry," the DUP councillor added.
He claimed that "those who are really in the know in the security forces are apprehensive about the IRA ceasefire".
He said "You can have 57 different varieties of the IRA if you want but their intention is just the same: to bomb, terrorise, murder and to get the British out of Northern Ireland. Terrorists only have one business -- terrorism. And that's what is happening in Omagh and the surrounding rural areas today."
HEARTS all over the world went out to the people of Tyrone when a Real IRA bomb ripped through bustling Omagh on a Saturday afternoon, plunging hundreds of lives into misery.
When US President Bill Clinton, Prince Charles, Prime Minister Tony Blair and other VIPs, after mourning along with the stricken people,
finally left there was an unwritten agreement among everyone to leave the town in solitude to privately come to terms with its inestimable grief. It wasn't to be.
Today, just a little over a month on, terror still stalks the streets of Omagh and innocent people are being intimidated.
IAN STARRETT reports
THERE is no better place to find solace in the wake of human loss than in the presence of God.
To kneel or sit in a place of worship in contemplative player provides, even sometimes for the non-churchgoer, a serenity of mind and soul that is welcome at a time of grief.
Yet not even before an altar has there been peace for the people of bomb-blitzed Omagh.
They were praying in several churches, close to where the bomb that has claimed 29 lives and maimed physically and mentally hundreds more, had exploded, when the first of the hoax calls had been made.
The churches had to be evacuated, sending Sunday worshippers, for whom the memory of Saturday, August 15 was still all too real, fleeing in terror once again.
Omagh has suffered even more since. Last Saturday, and again on Tuesday, Omagh was hit by warped individuals who triggered terror among thousands by simply lifting a telephone.
Oliver Gibson, who lost his niece in the Omagh atrocity, yesterday claimed that the bomb scare tactics are part of a new republican terror strategy.
He said: "A hoax bomb on a Sunday at churchtime has its own desperate and peculiar effects.
"A double bomb scare on Saturday sent everyone screaming with horror from one end of Omagh to the other. Children, mothers, ordinary shoppers, pensioners, all felt the great threat in a highly charged atmosphere.
"Then on Tuesday around 3,000 children left Omagh at 3.30pm with exactly the same message. This calculated strategy is to spread dread, threat and unending fear into every home.
"The unabated terror pressure on Omagh town still persists."
Now, says Mr Gibson, the pressure is being switched by the evil exponents of terror to the rural areas.
He declines to even hint at the identity of them -and considering how many Protestants have died by bullet or bomb along the Tyrone/Donegal border that is understandable - but he says that isolated Protestant families in the rural areas around Omagh are being bluntly told to "get out".
Mr Gibson said: "All of this is a silent but deadly spread of terror.
"It's a serious effort to drive business out of Omagh and also to contrive ethnic, cleansing by removing by threat the remaining Protestant families from areas where they are in a small minority.
"The IRA has not gone away and there is no peace in Omagh or its hinterland. In fact the pressure of terror has increased. All of the community feels continuously threatened."
The intimidated people living in the lonely Tyrone farmsteads, he said, are feeling very insecure.
They live amid countryside that is a magnificent example of the Creator's handiwork - not for nothing is the place known as "Tyrone among the bushes" - but it is the past bloodletting by the Devil's disciples that has struck fear into Protestant homes dotted across the rustic landscape.
Some of the victims of anonymous calls and muttered threats haven't even told the RUC, hoping against hope that the undercurrent of danger to their lives will ebb with time's passing.
As well as receiving telephone threats they claim that some republicans, knowing that they are Protestants, ignore them and don't speak to them.
It's a Cold War that's difficult to deal with, impossible to understand, yet chilling to the marrow.
Mr Gibson said he believed that the cruel hoax threats are "well planned, orchestrated".
He said: "Omagh used to be a bustling, thriving, nice country town but this has put the whole kibosh on it.
"Now Omagh is filled with apprehension, tension and fear because the republican terror campaign is continuing here.
"After the bomb and the visits by the Prime Minister, Prince Charles and the US President we said 'let's get back to full gear again' but now the reality has been kicking in. The IRA has not gone away as far as Omagh is concerned."
Mr Gibson said that according to information he has received the entire IRA East Tyrone and South Armagh brigades have joined up with the Real IRA.
"As well the Donegal Brigade I believe is 50-50 divided and there are bubbles of discontent among the brigade in Londonderry," the DUP councillor added.
He claimed that "those who are really in the know in the security forces are apprehensive about the IRA ceasefire".
He said "You can have 57 different varieties of the IRA if you want but their intention is just the same: to bomb, terrorise, murder and to get the British out of Northern Ireland. Terrorists only have one business -- terrorism. And that's what is happening in Omagh and the surrounding rural areas today."
Further Information
Publisher: NEWS LETTER
Ref: NL/309
Published Date: 19-Sep-98
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