A fairly
average town in
Northern Ireland, best noted for being
blown up in an especially
nasty fashion on the 15th of August 1998 leading to 29
deaths, the single most violent
terrorist act in the history of the
Troubles. A
telephoned warning claimed that a
bomb had been left outside the courthouse at the top of the
high street.
Police evacuated the shoppers to the other end of the
street, 400
metres away. 40 minutes after the warning, a car bomb
exploded in the centre of the crowd.
A large section of the high street was demolished afterwards, and still has not been entirely replaced. Despite demands from relatives of some of the dead, the road is still open to traffic (which is unsurprising, as closing it would have prevented any traffic access to the town centre at all). Other than this, Omagh is pretty much as it was 20 years ago which is something it shares with many other Northern Irish towns.