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By Frank McNamara
On the panic brought by the bomb
AFTER the blast rang out Isabel McGrann was afraid to turn around. Like others, she grabbed her child’s hand and raced towards Holy Cross.
“I was scared to turn round to look behind me,” she later said. “I thought the children and parents that were just behind were dead.”
She was taking her seven-year-old daughter Emma through the corridor of armoured vehicles as rocks rained down on them. The rocks were followed by the bomb.
“We had to grab every child we could to get them through the school gates. The kids come first.”
She added: “They are throwing pipe bombs now, I don’t think it could get any lower.”
When the blast rang out it sparked sheer panic among the convoy of parents and children who were making their way to Ardoyne’s Holy Cross school on the third day of the continuing loyalist protest.
Schoolgirls’ as young as four and five ran in fear, tripping over the rubble that littered the road from the previous night’s rioting.
They screamed and cowered in a desperate bid to escape the reality that a protest that for two days saw them abused and spat on now saw them targeted by bombers.
Those terrified by the attack from the loyalist Glenbryn area said the perpetrators “have not a thread of humanity or decency left in them”.
And others expressed concern the stand off has yet to reach its lowest level, fearing a death will result if attacks continue.
Yesterday the parents thrown into panic by the bombing spoke of their horror.
Brendan Mailey, the spokesman for the parents’ Right to Education group, said: “It’s obvious they have not a thread of humanity or decency left in them when they have to resort to throwing bombs at children.
“I was taking my child up the road and the blast bomb was thrown in front of us.
“It was sickening to see the terror on people’s faces. Monday was bad but that was them reaching the bottom of the barrel.”
Rocks and bricks showered onto the children and parents as they made their way through the police and army cordon around 9am yesterday.
One nationalist woman who collapsed in the wake of the blast, and who was believed to have suffered shock, had to be taken away by ambulance.
Fr Aidan Troy, chairman of the school governors, tried to calm parents as the attack took place. He said everyone caught up in it was traumatised.
Describing the moment he and parents rushed towards children to protect them, he said: “It was a moment of absolute terror, the unthinkable had happened.
“This was not meant to be heroic. I pray I will never be in a situation like that again.
“I’m very sad about what happened with the police officers and can only thank God children too were not injured.”
Holy Cross headteacher Anne Tanney said the attack was the “antithesis” of everything the school had been trying to achieve.
“It’s really unbelievable, we have had a parent taken to hospital with shock and I don’t know what the consequences are going to be for the children.
“These types of problems should never be brought into schools and should never be the concern of children.”
A parent later claimed simple bigotry was the motive for the blast.
“The world should see those people tried to murder women and children taking their children to school this morning.
“This is ethnic cleansing, they just don’t want Catholic people around here.”
Family and friends, left at the top of the security cordon as the parents walked on, later spoke of their fears at not knowing how serious the attack was.
As they heard the screams from the 80 or so children who had ventured forward, some tried to climb over the army barrier to get closer to the scene, many of them fearing carnage would face them on the other side.
“There was real panic here because we couldn’t get through to see what had happened,” said one mother.
“If the soldiers could have said everything was OK people would have calmed down.
“But they couldn’t because they didn’t know what was happening. I just don’t know how these children are going through this.”
The callous attack on the innocent children, they said, came after slow hand clapping had been heard on the loyalist side.
Some Ardoyne residents claimed there was a belief it was the signal that the attack was about to take place.
Brendan Bradley, an Ardoyne community worker looked beyond the immediate shock yesterday, and said: “I believe the people who carried out this attack wanted to make headlines.
“To continue making headlines they have to make things worse than what they are now.“That might mean stooping to lower depths than they have done here today – that might mean killing a child or parent going to the school.”
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