Families of Omagh bomb victims have vowed to take the Irish and British governments to court if they continue to refuse to hold a public inquiry into the attack.

The Claudy bombings of July 31, 1972, in which nine innocent people – five Catholics and four Protestants – were killed in Co Derry are now history, but they have an immediacy with the publication yesterday of the report of the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman, Al Hutchinson.

A US academic today spoke of his shock at the extent of apparent security force collusion in loyalist paramilitary murders in the North.