More families to tell their stories at bombing inquiry today

More bereaved families will get the opportunity to tell their story at the Omagh Bombing Inquiry today.

The inquiry, which resumed at the Strule Arts Centre this week, is currently focusing on the victims of the 1998 Real IRA atrocity.

Relatives of the 31 people, including unborn twins, are being given the chance to tell the world about their loved one.

In recent days, there have been heart-breaking testimonies from some of the families.

Today, the families of Geraldine Breslin, Gareth Conway and Debra-Anne Cartwright will tell their stories.

Geraldine Breslin was a 43-year-old married mother who worked as a shop assistant at Watterson’s drapers in Omagh.

She died eight hours after the blast – at the inquest into the deaths the coroner said she had been “fighting very much to live”.

Gareth Conway was an 18-year-old student who had just gained a place on an engineering course at university when he was killed.

His sister was a nurse at the Tyrone County Hospital and went to work after hearing about the bomb – it was then that she heard he was missing.

Debra-Anne Cartwright, 20, was working in a beauty salon in Omagh on the day of the explosion.

She was due to start a textile design degree in Manchester a month later.

The 20-year-old was moved out of the premises she was in when the bomb warning was issued and she walked down Market Street where the bomb detonated.