Maginnis was speaking for one of the few communities that knows what the people of New York and Washington are going through. In August 1998 a car bomb planted by the Real Irish Republican Army killed 29 people-including a pregnant woman and her unborn twins-and devastated the center of this market town among the green hills of County Tyrone.
It was almost the dying act, in Northern Ireland, of a band of dissident Irish Republicans who had rejected the IRA ceasefire and the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. The terror bombing prompted such global condemnation that there have been no further attacks. Support for the shattered community poured in from all over the world-and from America in particular-and prompted U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles to walk its bombed main street.
For three years, Omagh has been bandaging its wounds-and then came the terrorist attacks in the United States. The television pictures from New York brought back for many the sense of horror, anger and helplessness they had experienced as victims of an seemingly endless quarrel.
Malachy Keyes, 51, father of one of the most severely injured survivors of the Omagh bomb, didn’t hesitate for a minute. Just as he had done when he heard the explosion and knew that his daughter, Donna Marie, wasn’t home, he lit two candles and prayed, trying to provide a chink of light and hope. “I’m not overly religious,” he said, “but lighting the candles had helped us before, when we set out to look for Donna Marie, and I felt we needed them again.”
He finally found his daughter, then 23 and due to be married the following week, sitting up in a local hospital and eager to go home. But the doctors had warned him that she had burns over 65 percent of her body and face, with a long laceration that had peeled back her scalp to the bone. She had a 5 percent chance of living.
She was taken by helicopter to Belfast, and the unfinished business of her recovery began. She lay unconscious for two months while she was given skin grafts-using every unburned inch of her body, except her knees-and every visitor was strictly instructed to be as positive as possible in her presence, in case she could hear.
After recovering consciousness, her strong personality slowly asserted itself, and she began setting herself goals. First, she faced the TV cameras in her plastic mask, to overcome fears about her disfigurement. Then she married Gary McGillion, only eight months late, though with 20 open wounds under her dress. Her recovery continues: she had a baby girl three weeks ago, and now she is looking forward to permanent removal of her mask in two year’s time.
Having watched her progress, her father predicts that the injured victims of the U.S. disasters will need the same kind of spirit and dedication. “My message to the families would be to stay positive and not allow yourself to be dragged down by anger, or it will kill you from inside, like a cancer. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, even if you can’t see it yet.”
He understands the feelings of other Omagh victims, knowing that the bombers may never be charged, although the police know their identities. Phone taps have traced them on their route across the Irish border, but they used borrowed cell phones and cannot be linked to the explosion. Only one person has been charged with low-level involvement in the blast. As a result, a group representing a dozen of the victims’ families plans to bring a civil action against named individuals, and perhaps seize their assets, if they can raise some $2 million for legal fees.
“I know why they are pursuing this case, but most of us do not agree. There is no penalty to fit the crime, just as there is nothing that would match the atrocities in the U.S.A. Try to find the planners, if you can, but then leave it to God,” says Malachy Keyes.
This tolerance prevails in a mixed Catholic-Protestant community where a town councilor who was active in a political wing of the Real IRA was left to resign voluntarily. On the streets, people who have seen the results of violence and counterviolence are critical of what they see as President Bush’s Wild West language and fearful of a long drawn-out conflict.
“Sure, we’d all like to see the terrorists terrorized,” said one, “but we don’t want more innocents hurt to get the guilty.” Similar sentiments were expressed at special mixed-religion services, the second of which was held today in the Ulster-American Folk Park.
Meanwhile, as construction work continues at Omagh’s bomb site, where more than $1 million of American money will help provide a community center, the town has a new campaign to fight. A government report recommends the virtual closure of the local hospital, although professionals estimate that the bomb toll would have been as high as 70 had the hospital not been there to provide immediate care. THIS IS ONE PILL WE WILL NOT SWALLOW proclaims a banner across the street.
