Mullaghmore, Ireland---Britain's Prince Charles spoke of "anguish" at the murder of his godfather by IRA paramilitaries in 1979 as he became the first royal to visit the assassination site in Ireland on Wednesday.
Charles remembered Lord Louis Mountbatten as "the grandfather I never had" on an emotional trip to the rugged coastline, saying he understood the suffering of the Irish people in "a profound way".
The British Union Jack flag and the Irish tricolour flew side by side on the main street in Mullaghmore, the seaside village from where Mountbatten and his family set off on a boat which was later blown up by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb.
Under an overcast sky, Charles and his wife Camilla toured the site under heavy security as boats patrolled the bay and a helicopter hovered overhead.
"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 the nearby town of Sligo before the 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."
Mountbatten, Charles' great-uncle, his mother Queen Elizabeth II's cousin and the last viceroy of British-ruled India, was 79 when he was killed.
Two relatives, one of them Charles' teenage godson, and a local teenager also died in the attack.
Mountbatten's grandson, Timothy Knatchbull, who survived the blast but whose 14-year-old twin brother Nicholas was killed, met Charles in Mullaghmore along with local resident Peter McHugh, who helped bring the bodies ashore.
- 'Day of healing' -
John Maxwell, whose son Paul died in the attack aged 15, met Charles and Camilla in the nearby hotel where the dead were taken in 1979.
"It's tremendously good for British Irish relations to put it in a nutshell," Maxwell said of the meeting, describing it as "emotionally difficult".
"It's a sign of the times and a sign of better times ahead."
Church of Ireland minister Noel Regan, who worked as a chauffeur for Mountbatten, described the meeting as a "day of healing".
"It was incredibly moving in there. I saw people with tears in their eyes, people who knew the family. It was remarkable. There was such humanity."
Desmond Moran, a retired Sligo coroner who presided over the Mountbatten inquest, became visibly upset as he recounted his meeting with Charles in the Mullaghmore "peace garden".
"My heart feels healed. I think Ireland should be very proud that we have recovered so well as a nation," Moran said.
There has been a gradual process of reconciliation since the 1998 Good Friday Agreements which formally put an end to three decades of civil unrest known as The Troubles in which 3,500 people died.
AFP
