There was general dismay and outrage last night after vandals wrecked the garden of remembrance in Omagh for the victims of the 1998 bomb. Most painful for the families was the disappearance of the remembrance plaque in the centre of the garden calling on everybody "to honour and remember" the 29 people who lost their lives in the "Real IRA" bombing.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said he was "utterly disgusted by the depraved and wanton desecration".
The Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, said he was outraged vandals should have treated the memories of the dead and injured with "such callous disregard". The local SDLP MLA, Mr Joe Byrne, described the incident as "appalling".
A Sinn Fein councillor, Mr Sean Begley, said it was "beyond human comprehension" that some people had no respect for the dead.
However, the chairman of the 32-County Sovereignty Movement, former Sinn Fein councillor Mr Francie Mackey, still opposed plans to protect the garden with a closed-circuit TV camera. At a scheduled council meeting yesterday, councillors were discussing the installation of nine CCTV cameras, one of them overlooking the garden.
"What happened in the garden was disgraceful but I feel that these cameras have been unsuccessful in other places and only serve to shift the problem elsewhere. The real issue here is that there seems to be an `acceptable level of anti-social behaviour' in Omagh which is exacerbated by the fact that the town's nationalist population have no confidence in the police," he said.
Mr Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Adrian was one of the 29 people killed in the bombing, said "vandalism" was too mild a word to describe the destruction of the garden. "This was a frenzied, meticulous attack on a place that is sacred to so many people in this town. In fact, many of the relatives were in tears this morning."
Each of the garden's 10 heavy wooden benches had been overturned. Trees were uprooted and thrown over the fence into the grounds of the county hall. Heavy cast-iron flower pots had been overturned, their flowers had been pulled out and strewn all over the garden, leaving a yellow and red sea of trampled-on daffodils and primroses. Little red lanterns of remembrance had their candles pulled out.
Mr Stanley McCombe, who lost his wife, Ann, in the atrocity, was "absolutely sick and very angry".
Describing the attack as "beyond belief", the local RUC commander, Supt James Baxter, said police were keeping an open mind as to the motive. Among townspeople, opinions were mixed. "There has been an increasing culture of wanton violence and vandalism in Omagh," said Mr Paddy McGowan, an independent councillor.
Others felt there was a more sinister motive. Ms Liz Gibson, whose sister Esther was one of the victims, thought the act was linked to the relatives' civil case against the bombers, which had received high-profile coverage.