Three generations of family among victims

The dead in the Omagh explosion included three generations of one family - a woman who was eight months pregnant with twins, …

The dead in the Omagh explosion included three generations of one family - a woman who was eight months pregnant with twins, her 18-month-old baby, and her mother.

Ms Avril Monaghan (30), her baby daughter, Maura, and her mother, Ms Mary Grimes (65), were on a shopping trip when the bomb went off. As relatives gathered yesterday at the Grimes farm in Cooley, seven miles from Omagh, others were mourning in north Cork, which Mrs Grimes left some 40 years ago.

Mrs Grimes's brother, Mr Maurice Ahern, who lives near Kanturk, Co Cork, said he had learned on Saturday that the three had gone into Omagh, but until yesterday morning there was no word of them. "We finally got confirmation some time after 7 a.m." he said. "Our worst fears were realised."

The bomb also killed three children from Buncrana, Co Donegal, a child from Spain and a Spanish student group leader. The Spanish victims were among a group taking part in an exchange programme in Buncrana. A party of 43 people, including 32 children from Madrid and their group leader, had gone to Omagh on a day trip. The dead children from Buncrana were Sean McLaughlin (11), Oran Doherty (8) and James Barker (12). The Spanish student who died was Fernando Brasco Bacelga (11), from Madrid, along with the exchange programme leader, Mr Rocia Abad Ramos (29).

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Mr Kevin Skelton described yesterday how he had just left his wife, Philomena (39), and their three daughters in a shop in Omagh when the bomb exploded.

"It was as if the entire shop had fallen out," he said. "Then I saw my wife, she was lying in the rubble. She was face down, her clothes had been blown off her. I felt for her pulse but there was none."

When the security forces began to move people along the street in response to the bomb warning, Ms Brenda Logue (17) had left her mother and grandmother in a shop to go into the street and see what the commotion was about. She caught the full force of the explosion.

Her death was confirmed to her father Tommy yesterday. "I knew all along," he said. "I knew because the front of the shop was blown out and nobody could survive that."

A university student, Ms Julie Hughes (21), had been working at her part-time holiday job in Image Xpress, a photoshop in High Street. She left the shop when the area was being cleared and, like hundreds of others, ran into the blast and was killed.

Last night, 111 people were recovering in seven hospitals, from injuries ranging from loss of arms and legs, severe facial and body wounds caused by shrapnel, broken bones and extensive burns to all parts of their body, with one pregnant woman, aged 21, sustaining severe abdominal injuries. Her condition is described as ill but stable. Her unborn baby is understood to be stable.