Lockerbie victims remembered 30 years on from the terror attack that killed 270 people
Relatives of those who died have attended a service in the town to honour those who perished in the UK's worst terror attack.
Friday 21 December 2018 15:29, UK
The Queen has sent "prayers and good wishes" to the people of Dumfriesshire as they commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster.
It was on 21 December 1988 that a Pan Am jet travelling between London and New York was bombed out of the sky.
All 259 passengers and crew on board were killed when the aircraft exploded in the skies above Lockerbie. Eleven people were killed on the ground when the wreckage fell.
A service of commemoration and a wreath-laying has taken place in the town to mark the anniversary and remember the victims.
Bereaved relatives were among those who gathered in the town's memorial garden at Dryfesdale Cemetery, where the message from the Queen was read by Her Majesty's Lord Lieutenant for Dumfriesshire.
"I send my prayers and good wishes to all those who will be marking this solemn anniversary," the Queen said.
Scottish secretary and local MP David Mundell attended the service. Ahead of the anniversary, he said: "Lockerbie lost its anonymity that night. We went from a quiet small town to a centre of global attention in a few seconds.
"That was the scale of the challenge local people have faced, aside from the horrors of the air disaster itself. It has not been easy, nor have we been able to achieve the closure we would have wanted, even after 30 years.
"However, throughout, the people in Lockerbie have retained their dignity and stoicism, and offered friendship and support to those who lost loved ones."
Sky News spoke to Colin Gordon, who lost his older sister Olive on board Pan Am flight 103. It's the first time he has spoken publicly about events 30 years ago.
His sister was 25 at the time and was raising a young daughter on the William Bonney estate in Clapham. She was travelling to New York on holiday to visit friends.
In a tragic twist of fate, she had actually been due to travel on an earlier flight and only boarded the doomed aircraft because she had been delayed.
Colin was working in a hotel in Jamaica when he heard the news.
"I was handed this note. I opened it and it had this really bizarre message. It said, 'Come quickly, bring passport - death!'"
He said that when he realised what the note meant he felt "like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer".
But he said that in the following years the hardest part to deal with was the effect on his and Olivia's mother.
"I think that was the toughest thing," he said. "Watching my mother go through what any parent would dread - burying their child. That was the toughest thing."
The Lockerbie disaster remains Britain's biggest terrorist atrocity. A bomb exploded in the luggage hold of Pan Am flight 103 at 7.03pm as it flew at 31,000ft en route to New York's JFK airport from London Heathrow.
The victims came from 21 countries,with most from the US.
Only one man has ever been convicted of the bombing, Libyan national Abdel Basset ali-Mohmed al Megrahi who died in 2012.
Some British relatives of Lockerbie victims believe that he was innocent and support continuing efforts to have his conviction overturned posthumously.