This morning I attended a ceremony to mark the 81st anniversary of the Belfast Blitz at mass grave to unidentified victims of the raids at Belfast City Cemetery.
Between 7-8 April to 5-6 May 1941, the German air force launched four aerial bombing raids against Belfast to attack its war factories and shipbuilding facilities.
As a result of the raids, over 900 lives were lost, 1,500 people were injured, 400 of them seriously. Fifty thousand houses, more than half the homes in the city, were damaged. Eleven churches, two hospitals and two schools were destroyed. One hundred and fifty four of those people could not be identified and were buried in a mass grave in Belfast City Cemetery.
The ceremony moving and poignant and organised by the Northern Ireland War Memorial; the piper provided by Campbell College Belfast.
