On the 35th anniversary of the Lockerbie air disaster, First Minister @HumzaYousaf has expressed sympathies to those who lost loved ones on board Pan Am Flight 103 and on the ground.
He also paid tribute to emergency workers and others who responded in the immediate aftermath. pic.twitter.com/k9pUOtP37k
— First Minister (@ScotGovFM) December 21, 2023
First Minister
@ScotGovFM
On the 35th anniversary of the Lockerbie air disaster, First Minister @HumzaYousaf has expressed sympathies to those who lost loved ones on board Pan Am Flight 103 and on the ground.
The word “disaster” has its origins in astrology. It means “ill-starred”. But the people killed on 21st December 1988 were not killed by bad weather, human error, or an unfortunate conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. They were murdered.
Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by Clipper Maid of the Seas, a Boeing 747 registered N739PA. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the aircraft was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing.[1] Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, it is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom.
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In 2003, Gaddafi accepted Libya’s responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the families of the victims, although he maintained that he had never given the order for the attack.