ON Saturday, February 18, 1978, the News Letter described the shocking La Mon atrocity as “another Bloody Friday”.
Information was still coming in the morning after the bomb, with the final death toll emerging as 12.
The front page report evocatively described how guests staggered from the blaze with their clothes and hair on fire. Just minutes before they had been enjoying “good innocent fun in what was a normal Friday night routine at the popular nightspot”.
Initially it was believed that many of those killed were children because of how the fire bomb had damaged the bodies.
Only as the weekend progressed did the true picture emerge.
Our editorial column on the front page recorded: “The massacre at La Mon House Hotel near Comber last night was one of the worst – and may yet be found to be the worst – of a long series of terrorist atrocities perpetrated in the last eight years in Northern Ireland. The slaughter by fire bomb of so many innocent lives, and the killing of the Army colonel in the shot down helicopter earlier yesterday, were the latest grim retorts by murderers to the specious claims made in the highest quarters that the Troubles are on the wane. As for the British Government, surely the horror of last night will bring to them the realisation that the doctrine of minimum force is not the policy that will secure victory over incarnate evil.”