Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O’Neill has said the families of 10 men killed in a sectarian attack by the Provisional IRA at Kingsmill in 1976 deserve truth and justice.
Unionist parties in Northern Ireland have called for a public inquiry into the murders and criticised Sinn Fein for its failure to engage with the Kingsmill inquest.
It comes after a long-running inquest into the atrocity last week concluded that the shooting dead of the 10 Protestant workmen as they travelled on a minibus home from work at Kingsmill in Co Armagh was an “overtly sectarian attack by the IRA”.
While the atrocity was claimed by a little-known paramilitary group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force, coroner Brian Sherrard concluded that the Provisional IRA was responsible.
He also heavily criticised the IRA, and its political representatives, for failing to engage with the proceedings.
The sole survivor of the shooting, Alan Black, and relatives of one of the victims have called for a public inquiry into the attack, insisting the coronial proceedings had failed to answer their questions.
Ms O’Neill described last week – which also saw the inquest findings into the deaths of three IRA members at the hands of the army at Coagh, Co Tyrone, and also a challenge by government to an inquest into the death of GAA official Sean Brown – as “very bruising”.
“Let me be again categorical, I am sorry for every loss of life throughout the conflict, but my job as a political leader of today is to build towards the future, is to try and help to heal the wounds of the past,” she told media in Belfast.
Ms O’Neill said the Kingsmill inquest “underlines why we need to deal with the past properly”, and criticised the UK government’s legacy Act as “driving a coach and horses through the desires, wishes and needs of all families”.
“That includes the Kingsmill families who deserve truth and justice, who deserve a public inquiry, who deserve answers, but for my job as leader of today, I speak for Sinn Fein, I speak as First Minister in front of you today, I am sorry for every lost life including those in the Kingsmill disaster,” she added.