Coleraine bomb: What did killing six people in their sixties and seventies achieve asks granddaughter of victim

Her granddaughter said: “In Coleraine they didn’t know whether they were going to kill Catholics, Protestants, they just put the bomb there.

"They didn’t know whether it was going to be children or old aged pensioners.

"If if had been another 15 or 20 minutes there would have been utter carnage because the high school would have been getting out, there would have been children walking into it. They just didn’t care.”

Lesley, who attended today’s memorial, said she couldn’t understand how people could support those IRA terrorists who carried out this and other atrocities.

Discussing the memorial held on Sunday in South Armagh, she said: "It amazes me how people can support these kind of people – it could have been their mother, their grandmother.

“There's more support than ever, our country hasn’t moved on one bit because when you’re having a celebration for bombers and murderers and it’s a fun day out for the family.

"Would I have my children going to that? I don’t think so.

“They’ll say it’s celebrating their history, that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. That’s just a way of making it more acceptable. What they did will never be acceptable. They are celebrating people who have taken other people’s lives."

Of her own family’s loss she said: "When the bomb went off there was no way of knowing what was happening. My parents didn’t know if she’d been caught in the bomb or not because all the phone lines were down.

"It was the police that came to take them down to Coleraine. At that time they still didn’t know whether she was alive or dead.

"We were a very close family. You can imagine the devastation. Her life was just taken away… and for nothing.

“There isn’t anybody who can tell me what that bomb would have achieved – killing six people in their sixties and seventies.”