Children the victims of reckless dissidents

Indeed it has been suggested the town could have been facing a tragedy similar to that at Omagh - just a day before the anniversary of that bomb atrocity.

Three children were lucky to escape with cuts and shock after the no warning device exploded at Kilmaine Street - in an apparent booby trap for police on cordon duty for a separate alert.

The mother of one of the children caught in the blast revealed how it had brought memories of another dark day flooding back.

Karen Hendron, 39, said she was “devastated” by the bomb which exploded in a bin, injuring her daughter, Lauren.

Mrs Hendron, who was caught up in a UFF car bomb in 1974 when she was aged three, said it had brought back terrible memories for her and her family.

The mother-of-two said her daughter was in an awful state of shock, constantly crying and not able to understand what had happened.

“I tried to get down to the scene on Saturday night but we couldn’t get near it. But I went on Sunday morning at six o’clock just to see what it was like.

“I feel devastated. It’s unbelievable that it could happen to my daughter. I was in a car bomb myself when I was about three and a half in Hannahstown.”

She said still has a scar all the way along her leg from that blast.

“I can’t believe this is coming on her... it makes me sick that this is happening in Lurgan too.”

She added: “I think it has affected her really badly too. Both girls have been crying their eyes out. She just keeps asking questions about it.

“Why this, why that... every time she sees a policeman now she thinks there might be bad boys about – that are going to do something.”

Lauren’s father, Cathal Hendron, described how his daughter had a suffered a huge bump on the back of her head in the blast and had been taken to hospital as a precaution, however, the swelling has since gone down.

The 41-year-old said his daughter had nightmares after the bombing: “Normally on a Saturday that street is full. People walking up and down all the time. It’s unreal, thoughtless. It’s stupid just killing people – for what?”

Another of the children caught up in Saturday’s blast, 12-year-old Demi Maguire, sat in tears as she described how she and her friend were innocently swinging her two-year-old sister over road ramps when the bomb exploded.

She was on her way to the shop with her little sister Carla and her friend Lauren Hendron when the bomb went off.

“We were just swinging Carla over the wee ramps and the thing just went off. It sounded like a big, big bang. It was really, really loud,” she said.

“We were just going to the shop and the next minute it just went off. Somebody said to run so we just ran.

“I was really really scared. We ran down the street. I knew this girl called Tracey because she lives down there and she was hugging us and stuff because we were really scared.

“Then the whole street was out. We went into this woman’s house. She brought us in to calm us down. Then the police came and asked us what happened and asked were we all right. He was checking my friend’s head and they rang the ambulance. Then we went to the hospital.”

She said: “I didn’t have a clue what it was but I knew it was scary. Part of the bin just blew off and landed in front of me.”

Demi’s father Frankie Maguire, 40, said: “Nobody wants to go back to them days, do they? I worked in Belfast all my life and I’ve seen enough of the Troubles over the years without going back to that.

“When I saw her she was hugging me and crying and stuff. It’s scary. Even the wee one, she woke up first thing on Sunday and even she was talking about the bomb.”

He said they had been walking on the pavement just across the road, yards from the bin containing the bomb.

“It’s bad when your child gets caught up in a bomb. To make matters worse I only buried my daddy there five weeks ago. He died of a massive heart attack,” he said.

Demi's mum Ronda put it in stark terms: "We could have been burying our two wee girls today."