By Anne Cadwallader
PORTADOWN — Seven loyalists are being questioned by the RUC after a 59-year-old grandmother was murdered in her home by a pipe bomb that was thrown through the window of her home. A brick had initially been thrown through the window, apparently to make way for the bomb.
Elizabeth O’Neill, a Protestant married to a Catholic, was killed almost instantly when she picked up the device to throw it out into her front yard. The bombing happened in the early hours of Saturday morning in the mainly Loyalist Corcrain area, where the O’Neills had lived for the last 36 years.
It was one of seven loyalist pipe bomb attacks across Northern Ireland last weekend. A brick crashed through the window of a second home about 10 minutes after the attack on O’Neill, but the bomb that followed fell short and detonated in the front yard. A woman, her teenage daughter and 10-month-old baby escaped injury.
On Monday, an unexploded pipe bomb was found outside the canteen of a Catholic primary school in Ballymena. More than 120 children were evacuated.
The O’Neill murder and other attacks appear to be an attempt to increase tension and fear in the run-up to this year’s Orange Order Drumcree parade on July 4. There has been one pipe bomb attack on average every four days this year.
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The Loyalist Volunteer Force and Orange Volunteers denied they were involved in the murder, but RUC Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan said he is not treating the paramilitaries’ statement at face value.
Speaking in Portadown, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said that sectarianism was a significant factor. It is a time, he said, for calm and reflection, not for people to "hug their grievances."
O’Neill, the child of a mixed marriage herself, who had been brought up Protestant, was married to a Catholic, Joseph, and had two grown-up sons, Martin and Justin, who had been brought up Catholics. Her husband, who was in the house at the time the bomb exploded, escaped injury.
The murder has drawn widespread condemnation, with Trimble describing it as an attempt to wreck the efforts to find a solution to the Drumcree crisis that must not be allowed succeed.
The bereaved family branded the killers "cowards." Her son, Martin, said that the family was disgusted by the attack and asked if his mother’s life was worth the walk down the Garvaghy Road.
Ongoing intimidation
Bríd Rodgers of the SDLP said that the murder was the culmination of 11 months of intimidation of nationalists in Portadown. As he arrived at talks to try and resolve the Drumcree crisis on Saturday, Brendan Mac Cionnaith of the Garvaghy Road Residents said that the murder cast a shadow over the group’s efforts.
Mac Cionnaith said "people should not lose sight of the fact that it comes a week after the main Orange spokesman in the town, David Jones, said that the North was ‘on a slippery slope to civil war.’ "
Mac Cionnaith added: "It also comes within three weeks of Paul Berry, of the DUP, making explicit threats against this community, saying loyalists would have to ‘take the law into their own hands’ to get an Orange march down the Garvaghy Road.
"The message I am getting from people along the road this morning is that I should go to the proximity talks with the Orange Order and tell them to get lost."
Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, said he was shocked by the murder, andappealing for calm and vigilance. "The Orange Order has fanned the flam of sectarianism with its refusal to treat nationalists as equals and by the actions and language of its members," he said.