Sligo, Ireland---Britain's Prince Charles will on Wednesday visit the site where his beloved great-uncle Earl Mountbatten was murdered by the Irish Republican Army paramilitary group in 1979.
The first visit by a royal to Mullaghmore since the killing comes a day after Charles became the first British royal to meet veteran Irish republican leader Gerry Adams.
The visit will be a poignant stop for the heir to the British throne on a two-day trip to Ireland that underscores warming relations between the two countries.
Mountbatten, Charles's godfather, mentor and the last viceroy of British-ruled India, was killed aged 79 when a bomb on his fishing boat exploded off the coast of County Sligo, near the border with Northern Ireland.
Two relatives and a 15-year-old local boy were also killed in what was one of the most high-profile IRA attacks during a period known as "The Troubles", three decades of conflict in which 3,500 people died.
Ahead of the visit Charles was presented with a piece of fossil coral from Mullaghmore, a 335-million-year-old gift intended to offer historical perspective.
"The coral has seen the ancient tribes of Ireland come and go, the Normans, the Plantagenets, the Tudors, the British Empire and the Troubles," said geology professor Andrew Wheeler, who presented the gift.
"All of this is just a fleeting moment in the coral's extraordinary history."
The IRA claimed Mountbatten's killing as part of their campaign to end British control of Northern Ireland, and those who carried out the attack were never found.
Charles and his wife Camilla will also view poetry, music and art displays in Sligo before travelling to the grave of famed Irish poet W.B. Yeats, who died in 1939.
AFP
