A public inquiry has heard from the daughter of Omagh bomb victim, Elizabeth Rush, who has stated that she felt “evil was in the air” on the day of the 1998 attack. Elizabeth Rush, known as Libbi, was killed as she was serving customers in her gift shop in the town centre. She was one of the 29 people killed by a Real IRA bomb, including a woman who was pregnant with twins. Her daughter Siobhan described the bombing as having destroyed the “simple, quiet and normal family life of a woman, a mother, and her family,” calling it a “crime against humanity.”
Libbi’s husband, Lawrence Rush, who died in 2012, was among the first relatives to query the role of the state and question the police response to the bombing. Siobhan told the hearing that her father had been met “with a wall of silence” when he had sought answers, but that he sought accountability and transparency regardless due to his love for his late wife.
The public inquiry was set up to examine whether the attack could have been prevented by the UK authorities. The inquiry also heard from the children of Omagh businessman Sean McGrath, who passed away three weeks after the bombing. His son, Gavin McGrath, missed the birth of his first child in London to be at his father’s bedside in the hospital. The family is reportedly still struggling to come to terms with his loss, and his other son Conor said that they believed there had been a purposeful effort to evade responsibility from the state.
The youngest of the victims, 17-year-old Samantha McFarland, had been volunteering in an Oxfam shop when she was killed alongside her best friend. The inquiry heard how her “genuine kindness” had brought joy and kindness to the lives of others, and how her potential for adult life had been extinguished by the actions of the bombers. Lord Turnbull, the inquiry chairman, described the senseless killings of children and young people whose adult lives had been destroyed. The event was one of the largest mass killings in the history of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland
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