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You never forget your first bomb. On April 12, 1989, the solid whump of a 680-kilogram car bomb set off by the Irish Republican Army was enough to stop me and my classmates at St Peter’s Boys’ School dead in our tracks.
Our heads snapped right, watching the growing cloud of smoke rising from Charlotte Street, the site of our little town’s fortified police barracks. That blast – which I remember more as a feeling than a sound – killed Joanne Reilly, 20, who had been working in Heately & Morgan’s hardware shop beside the station belonging to the RUC, the local police force. It also injured nine police and 31 civilians.