‘They Have the Power to Bomb and Kill Us’

Most of the neighborhoods and schools here are still segregated, of course, but the Protestants and Roman Catholics of Omagh had found many places to meet and befriend one another before a car bomb brought them together in mourning.

They played ball in a mixed soccer league, downed pints of beer at the Clock, a mixed pub, and decorated floats for a communitywide parade that was ready to begin when the bomb went off, creating mayhem downtown and leaving 28 dead and more than 200 wounded.

The town’s modern sports complex was another meeting ground before the two sides gathered there in a grim vigil Sunday, awaiting identification of their relatives and wondering why--why was their town chosen for the worst attack in 30 years of sectarian conflict?

“Maybe they don’t like to see people getting together and being agreeable,” said Michael Haughey, 53, whose brother-in-law was killed in Saturday’s blast. “Maybe they hope to cause trouble in both religions.”

No group has claimed responsibility for planting the 500-pound bomb, but police and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern say the leading suspect is a dissident band of the Irish Republican Army calling itself the “Real IRA,” which opposes Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace agreement and the accompanying cease-fires.

The Real IRA, believed to have no more than 100 adherents, claimed responsibility for a similar car bombing Aug. 1 that injured 35 people in Banbridge, another market town near Belfast, the provincial capital.

Ahern said his government will use any means to crush the breakaway republican group reportedly based in Ireland and headed by the former “quartermaster,” or munitions chief, of the IRA, Michael McKevitt, whose name is widely known in Northern Ireland but is not reported in the media because of libel laws.

He is also known as the partner of Bernadette Sands, a sister of martyred IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and leader of the 32 County Sovereignty Committee opposed to the accord.

In Search of Answers

Royal Ulster Constabulary chief Ronnie Flanagan said on BBC television Sunday that he had established a special task force to investigate the Omagh attack.

“It is fair to say that our focus at this point in time would be on those who call themselves the 32 County Sovereignty movement and those close to them,” Flanagan said.

The Sovereignty Committee responded from Ireland with a statement that it is a political movement and not a military group: “We reject categorically any suggestions publicly made that our movement was responsible in any way.”

Two other violent dissident groups also are known to authorities: the Continuity IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army.

Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who cut short a vacation in France to fly to Northern Ireland, insisted that renegades will not succeed in wrecking the power-sharing peace agreement between the region’s Protestant majority and Catholic minority.

That assertion was echoed with varying degrees of hope by many of Omagh’s 25,000 residents, who before Saturday also had hoped that the worst of the British province’s sectarian violence was behind them.

The region is bitterly torn between pro-British unionists, most of whom are Protestant and want Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain, and Catholic nationalists who want it to be united with the Irish Republic.

The peace agreement reached in April states that the status quo will prevail as long as a majority of the people of Northern Ireland wants it. Meanwhile, it establishes a provincial government, in which power is shared by Protestants and Catholics, with institutional links to the Irish Republic.

Margaret Geelan, a Catholic schoolteacher married to a Protestant, was among the 83% of Omagh voters who backed the peace agreement in a referendum in May. She said there is only one way the violent opposition can quash the will of the voters.

“They have the power if they want to bomb us all and kill us all,” Geelan said. “We don’t want those people around us. All they can organize is our deaths, and we want to organize our lives.”

While the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, had considerable Catholic support during its war against British rule, the renegades can make no such claim at this time. And if they had hoped to gain any converts with the Omagh bombing, they clearly failed. A majority of the victims were Catholic, and Catholics and Protestants alike condemned the blood bath.

“I’d be against ‘em for this,” said Dara McLernon, 25, an Omagh Catholic who accompanied a Protestant friend to await confirmation of the death of his friend’s sister. “They are trying to break the whole peace process. We can only pull together. And we are--the way you see people working together at the hospital and here.”

McLernon said he voted for Sinn Fein in June in an election for a new Northern Ireland legislature, which will be the foundation of the provincial government. A Cabinet is to be selected from the legislature when it meets next month.

But in the wake of the bombing, McLernon said he doubted he would vote for Sinn Fein again because he believes the mainstream IRA could stop the dissidents if it wanted but is doing nothing. “They know who they are,” he said.

Anticipation of such a backlash from the heavily Catholic town may have been what prompted Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to issue his first clear condemnation of a terrorist attack in the case of the Omagh bombing and to visit those grieving at the sports center Sunday.

Adams said the bombing was “wrong--totally, absolutely wrong.” He added, “I call upon whoever is responsible to admit responsibility and cease these actions.”

Many fear that the pain and anger left by the bombing will translate into a desire for revenge.

Television reports said Protestant paramilitaries planned to meet in secret Sunday to decide whether to break their cease-fire and retaliate against Catholics.

Northern Ireland’s first minister, moderate Protestant David Trimble, called on all sides to avoid renewing the cycle of violence.

“Above all, I call on any individual or group seeking retaliation to think again. Not only would it be wrong, it would be foolish,” he wrote in London’s Sunday Mirror.

‘A Building Stone’

Thirteen women, six men and nine children, including a baby girl and several teenagers, died in the blast. More than 100 people were still hospitalized Sunday, and officials said at least 10 of them were in critical condition.

Brigid Fleming’s daughter, two sisters and brother were among those wounded when police unwittingly ushered the Saturday shopping crowd in the direction of the bomb after receiving misleading information in a telephoned warning.

Fleming waited in the lobby of Tyrone County Hospital for doctors to remove shrapnel from her 26-year-old daughter’s throat and recalled that she had thought three Catholic boys who were burned to death by a firebomb last month would be the last casualties of “the Troubles.”

“I really thought that would be the end,” Fleming said. “Now, I just feel like moving away. . . . There’ll never be peace.”

Nearby, 17-year-old Owen McAteer was somewhat more hopeful.

“When you talk about the political side, it all seems so irrelevant at the moment,” said the youth, who had come to visit two injured friends, one Catholic, one Protestant. “We all voted in favor of peace. I hope this will be a building stone. The community will pull together.”

His mother, who had witnessed the carnage downtown, listened to him with love in her eyes and the fear of what could have been.

“I feel angry and also very relieved my children were not injured and selfish that we were so lucky. It is a strange mix of guilt and relief,” said Joan McAteer.

Her eldest son, Ronan, 19, said that before the blast, he was assigned to write an essay for a college sociology class on whether disaster builds or breaks down a sense of community.

“A couple of weeks ago, I went to the library to get books. Now, I don’t need any books. It unites people, very definitely,” Ronan McAteer said. “The peace process has to go forward. As hard as it is, what else is there?”