Prince Charles to visit great-uncle's IRA murder site

Britain's Prince Charles today spoke of his "anguish" at the murder of his beloved great-uncle by the IRA paramilitary group in 1979, on an emotional visit to the assassination site in Ireland.
The heir to the throne is on a two-day trip to the country, where yesterday he became the first British royal to meet Gerry Adams, the veteran leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the now defunct Irish Republican Army.
Charles and his wife Camilla are currently in the western county of Sligo, where they will later pay what is expected to be an emotional visit to the village of Mullaghmore where Lord Mountbatten was murdered.

Louis Mountbatten, Charles' godfather and great-uncle, his mother Queen Elizabeth II's cousin and the last viceroy of British-ruled India, was killed aged 79 when the IRA blew up a bomb on his fishing boat.
Two relatives, one of them Charles' teenage godson, and a 15-year-old local boy also died in the attack.
"At the time I could not imagine how we would come to terms with the anguish of such a deep loss," Charles told an audience in Sligo ahead of the Mullaghmore visit.

"Through this dreadful experience I now understand in a profound way the agonies borne by others on these islands of whatever faith or political persuasion."

A few hours after the attack, 18 British soldiers were killed in an IRA ambush across the border in Northern Ireland, in one of the deadliest days of The Troubles.
An estimated 3,500 people died during the sectarian unrest, which lasted three decades.