The Dunmurry train bombing was a premature detonation of a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) incendiary bomb aboard a Ballymena to Belfast passenger train service on 17 January 1980. The blast engulfed a carriage of the train in flames, killing three and injuring five others. One of the dead and the most seriously injured survivor were volunteers of the IRA. After the blast, the organisation issued a statement acknowledging responsibility, apologising to those who were harmed and stated that it was 'grave and distressing' but an 'accident' caused by the 'war situation'. The explosion The train was a Northern Ireland Railways afternoon service carrying passengers between Ballymena railway station and Belfast Central railway station. The train was largely empty as it left Dunmurry railway station and entered the outskirts of Belfast, crossing under the M1 motorway on its way to Finaghy railway station shortly before 4.55 p.m., when a large fireball erupted in the rear carriage, bringing the train to a standstill and forcing panicked passengers to evacuate urgently as the smoke and flames spread along the train. The survivors then moved down the track in single file to safety whilst emergency services fought the blaze. After several hours and combined efforts from fire, police and military services the blaze was contained. One fireman was treated for minor injuries. The two damaged carriages were transported to Queen's Quay in Belfast for forensic examination and were subsequently rebuilt. One remaining in service until 2006 and the other until 2012. Of the four persons occupying the carriage, three were killed with burns so severe that it was not possible to identify them by conventional means. Rail chief Roy Beattie described the human remains as "three heaps of ashes". The fourth, later identified as Patrick Joseph Flynn, was an IRA member and one of the men transporting the bombs. He suffered very serious burns to his face, torso and legs, and was reported to be close to death upon arrival at the hospital. Of the dead, two were eventually named as 17-year-old Protestant student Mark Cochrane from Finaghy and the other a 35-year-old Belfast-based accountant and recent immigrant from Lagos, Nigeria, Max Olorunda, who had been visiting a client in Ballymena. He left a wife Gabrielle, a Catholic nurse originally from Strabane, and three daughters; the youngest Jayne, is an author and a cross-community worker. Aged two at the time of the bombing,