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Buncrana mourns slain US
soldier
02.10.07
THE US military is
investigating the shooting dead in Afghanistan of a
female soldier who spent many happy summers in
Buncrana.
Ciara Durkin, 30, from Quincy, Massachusetts, was
reported as killed in action on September 27th in
Afghanistan.
She was a member of the Massachusetts Army National
Guard, and had been serving in Afghanistan for
nearly a year. |
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Her sister Aine Durkin
is a well known member of the Buncrana community
having lived there for many years. The Durkins are
originally from Connemara in the Galway Gaeltacht.
Ciara left Ireland with her parents, Tommy and
Angela, when she was nine years old, but returned
for a time to attend secondary school in Carraroe,
Co. Galway. It was at this time, she would travel to
Buncrana for her summer holidays.
Aine explained that she received word of Ciara's
death on Friday afternoon. She said she has been
overwhelmed by |
the messages of support
from the people of Buncrana, who remembered her
younger sister working summers in the seaside town
until she was in her mid-teens.
"I would like to thank all the people who have
called to the house here. Ciara had been in Buncrana
most summers for many years up to the age of 16. She
just loved it here in Buncrana and she loved
Donegal," Aine told the Shaun Doherty radio show
yesterday.
"She had worked in McGinley's Post Office. She was a
very happy person. I want to thank all those people
who remembered her, who've been sending us notes
about how they remember her in Buncrana and what she
did, because it's important for us that people do
remember what a lovely, lovely person Ciara was,"
she said.
Meanwhile, Pádraig Ó Conghaile, Aine and Ciara's
brother-in-law, appealed to the Irish Department of
Foreign Affairs to participate in the investigation
into her death. It is understood she sustained a
gunshot wound to the head.
The Durkin family have been told that the
investigation, which is being conducted by the US
military, will take up to eight weeks to complete. |
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