DUBLIN/LONDON: Ministers from India, Canada and Ireland today led mourners to observe a minute's silence at an Irish memorial garden to remember the 329 people who were killed when a terrorist bomb destroyed an Air India trans Atlantic jet 25 years ago.
Minister for Corporate and Minority Affairs Salman Khurshid, Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin and the Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney joined the relatives of the dead at the annual service held at the remote Sheep's Head peninsula on Ireland's west Cork coast over which the plane exploded, the Irish Times reported.
The ill-fated Montreal-New Delhi Air India Kanishka flight via Toronto and London exploded mid-air 45 minutes before it was to land at London's Heathrow Airport, killing all 329 people on board, most of whom were Canadians of Indian descent.
"The tragedy has forged an unbreakable bond between the people of three continents," the Irish Foreign Minister Martin said as the gathering fell into silence at 8.13 am, the exact moment when a bomb hidden in the luggage hold of the plane exploded and the Air India flight 182 disappeared from radar blips.
The bombing attack was blamed on Sikh militants avenging Operation Blue Star of 1984.
