Minister Alex Attwood expresses sympathy with the people of Boston

CROSS party Assembly members expressed their sympathy in the chamber for the people of Boston following Monday’s explosions during the marathon.

SDLP Environment Minister Alex Attwood said the usual festival atmosphere of the Boston marathon stood “in stark and chilling contrast to what we saw yesterday”.

He said there was a “particular relationship between Derry and Boston, Belfast and Boston and Ireland and Boston”.

The DUP’s Jimmy Spratt expressed his party’s sympathy to the people of Boston and the United States.

He compared events in Boston to the experience of people in Northern Ireland when “suddenly mayhem and terror strikes”.

UUP MLA Ross Hussey said he had heard a recording of the explosions on the radio.

“I almost froze as I drove up the road as I immediately thought of Omagh,” he said.

TUV leader Jim Allister says NI people ’empathise’ with Boston

Twenty-nine people, including a woman pregnant with twins, were killed in the Real IRA attack on the County Tyrone town on August 15, 1998.

Sinn Fein MLA Raymond McCartney expressed his party’s condolences, as did Stephen Farry for the Alliance Party.

The TUV’s Jim Allister said the people of Northern Ireland could “truly empathise with the people of Boston”.