Teebane massacre: Atrocity remember 33 years on, as service marks IRA bombing that killed eight Protestant workmen in County Tyrone
Eight victims murdered in an IRA atrocity have been remembered in a solemn ceremony marking the 33rd anniversary of the bombing.
The Teebane Massacre saw paramilitaries detonate a 1,500-pound bomb at a rural crossroads between Omagh and Cookstown, killing eight people and wounding six more in a passing van.
Construction workers, the victims were on their way home from a job on an army barracks.
On Sunday afternoon (19th), bereaved families, injured survivors and the broader victim and survivor community came together at a memorial marking the atrocity.
It was a show of public support for the families and survivors – support that’s all the more necessary as, despite regular calls for an enquiry and information, no one has ever been brought to justice for the deadly attack on unsuspecting civilians.
Among those backing the survivors and families were representatives from victims group the South East Fermanagh Foundation, which has supported people connected to the massacre through its advocacy, health and wellbeing programmes.
Said director Kenny Donaldson: “Teebane was a brutal crime, motivated by sectarian and ethnic hatred.
“Eight Protestants were mercilessly murdered by Provisional IRA terrorists because they dared to work for a living in order to provide for themselves and their families - and because they were judged by Irish Republicans as being "collaborators with the British” through their employment.
“Let’s be clear upon this, there are those who live close to the Teebane area who will have had a role in that atrocity, their anonymity has been protected all these years, they have never been held accountable.
“Those who gave the strategic order for Teebane to happen and those who actually detonated the bomb have never yet been held accountable."
Theorising that a dozen or more people were involved in the planning and execution of the massacre, Mr Donaldson added that the bombing “deeply attacked the heart of the community in that area”.
He said: “It is important that the Teebane families are not permanently failed; they too deserve justice and accountability, just as others have demanded it, and have been facilitated by this state to receive some measure of it.”
The date of January 17, 1992, lives in infamy in County Tyrone.
That evening saw the IRA detonate their massive roadside bomb at Teebane crossroads.
Seven men, ranging in age from their early twenties to early sixties, were killed in the blast, while the van’s driver died of his wounds several days later.
A further six men were injured.
The explosion, so loud it was heard up to 10 miles away, was the deadliest attack of the Troubles since 1988 – and the force of the blast threw several of the men’s bodies into a field next to the road.
Claiming responsibility, the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade stated the workers were targeted as they were "collaborators engaged in rebuilding Lisanelly barracks”.
But as all of the men killed were Protestant, most saw the massacre as nakedly sectarian.
Although suspects were arrested in the wake of the attack, nobody has been charged with or convicted of the bombing.
Relatives of the dead and surviving victims have repeatedly appealed for information on who was responsible.