The sense of despair of some Omagh bomb families deepened today amid claims they were being left more and more isolated. As the town prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of the terrorist outrage, relatives accused the authorities and even their neighbours of failing to back them in their quest for justice.
No one has ever been convicted for the Real IRA attack which claimed the lives of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and left hundreds more injured.
Cathy Gallagher, whose 21-year-old brother Aiden died in the explosion, said she was forced to move away from her hometown which she claimed was a cold and cruel place and where victims' families are resented. "Everything about the town had turned rotten," she said.
She claimed the families' support and self-help group is ridiculed and despised
by many within the local community. "The Omagh community spirit I read so much about in newspaper articles never existed for me," she said.
Such is the level of anger, at least 10 of the families have decided to boycott a commemoration service to mark the 10th anniversary on Friday.
They are deeply unhappy with the way Omagh District Council handled the contentious issue of the wording for new memorials erected at the bomb site on the town's Market Street and at a nearby garden of remembrance.
Instead the relatives, the majority of whom belong to the support group, are staging their own memorial event on Sunday.
However, the four main church leaders in the town have angered the group by rejecting an invitation to that event, despite having attended it in previous years. The clergy are only going to the council event, where former Lebanon hostage Terry Waite will give an address.
Carol Radford, whose 16-year-old brother Alan was killed, moved out of a nationalist estate in Omagh after claiming she was subject to a campaign of intimidation which culminated in vandals daubing "IRA" on the side of her house.
Her sister and brother have left the town altogether to start new lives in England in order to escape the bitterness, she said.
"I wish I had left too," she added. "There's not much support we get in this town."
Ms Radford is among those who have decided to stay away from the council commemoration in protest at the memorial issue.
Members of the support group had demanded the retention of a phrase engraved on an original tribute stone, which has since been removed from the garden of remembrance, stating that the victims were "murdered by a dissident republican terrorist car bomb".
The council appointed an independent fact-finding team to try to resolve the issue and councillors unanimously accepted its recommendation to use the phrase on the walls of the garden of remembrance, but not on the glass obelisk at the bomb site.
Ms Radford claimed Sinn Fein members of the council are trying to air-brush republican involvement in the bombing.
Sinn Fein councillor and chairman of Omagh council Martin McLoughlin said it was a pity some families had decided not to attend. However, he defended the council's approach to the memorial issue.
"I'd love to see everyone there on Friday," he said. "As a council we have tried to do our best to mark the anniversary. I realise it's a sensitive time and different people will react differently.
"But I can't legislate for how some families are going to react, that's their prerogative. The wording issue as far as we are concerned is resolved. I know the support group wanted certain wording at the garden and that has been included.
police on both sides of the border heavily criticised for their handling of the investigation.
A number of families have launched a £14 million civil case against five men they believe were responsible while relatives continue to criticise the British and Irish governments over their refusal to hold a cross-border public inquiry into the bombing.