Paddy Duffy Collection

This memorial to the victims of the Omagh bombing is in a green-space along the Strule river about 300 metres (WP) from the spot where an RIRA car-bomb exploded on the afternoon of 15th of August 1998, killing twenty-nine people and injuring more than 200 others.

The garden was opened on the tenth anniversary, in 2008 (replacing a smaller obelisk). It includes 31 mirrors on poles (including a set of unborn twins in the number of deceased) which are part of a reflective system that sends sunlight towards a crystal pillar in Market Street that marks that spot of the bomb (Troubles Archive).

There are also a series of engraved stones on an arc around the pool that tell the story of the day and its aftermath, as well as naming the dead:

“Weather wise it was one of the best days that summer had seen. Ordinary people were doing ordinary things on an ordinary day. In one fateful moment all this was changed forever. Time stood still, futures were obliterated, loves were shattered, hearts were broken. In the carnage, emergency personnel and many ordinary people reached out, helped the injured, gave hope to the dying and held the dead. That evening a great silence descended on the town. In the week which followed the people walked with one another in the companionship or shared grief as funeral followed funeral. From all over the world came visitors, messages of sympathy, condemnation, solidarity, hope and practical support. The Omagh bomb was the largest single atrocity in over thirty years of violence in which over 3700 people were killed. The bomb took place four months after the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement of 10 April 1998, subsequently endorsed in referenda in both parts of Ireland on 22 May 1998. In the years that followed people Omagh and elsewhere sought to rebuild their lives, their families, their community, and to create a new future. Regardless of the past, every new days dawns as a gift laden with its own possibilities, as the morning sun banishes the darkness of night.”

One of the stones reads “Bear in mind these dead/Coınnıgh ı gcuımhne na maırıbh seo/Tened en cuenta a estos muertos – (John Hewitt)”; two of the victims were Spanish.

Drumragh Avenue, Omagh

“Saturday 15 August 1998 at 3.10 PM. To honour and remember the 31 men, women and children who were killed, the hundreds injured and those whose lives were changed forever in the Omagh bomb. ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it’ (John 1.5)”

“To honour and remember 31 people murdered and hundreds injured from three nations by a dissident republican terrorist car bomb. (Omagh Support And Self Help Group)”

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