Irish, Canadian and Indian officials joined victims' families at a ceremony Wednesday in the southwest of Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the midair bombing of Air India Flight 182.
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said it was with "great sadness" that they gathered to remember the 329 victims who died when the Boeing 747 was blown up in Irish airspace over the North Atlantic on June 23, 1985.
Martin said the bombing was "evil and cowardly" and the memorial site at Ahakista on Ireland's Atlantic coast on the Durrus peninsula was a sacred place that represented a "rejection of the hatred and violence of terrorism".
"There can be no justification for the murder of innocents in pursuit of any political end. All who have been touched by the evil and destruction inflicted by callous terrorism utterly condemn these brutal, senseless, acts.
"It is vitally important that all democratic nations work together to combat terrorism in all its forms," Martin said.
Only 131 bodies were recovered, a third of them under the age of 17.
The airliner exploded as it flew towards Ireland on its planned journey from Montreal to London. Most of the victims were naturalised Canadians of Indian origin, en route to visit friends and families abroad.
The Ahakista memorial includes a sundial with its shadow designed to touch a precise spot every June 23 at 8:13 a.m. (0613 GMT) when Flight 182 disappeared from radar screens.
The inscription on the sundial reads: "Time flies, suns rise and shadows fall, let it pass by, love reigns forever overall."
Earlier this month a Canadian inquiry report faulted security agencies in that country for a "cascading series of mishaps" that could have allowed the attack to happen.
Prosecutors argued that Sikh extremists had sought to bring down Air India flights in retaliation for the Indian government's June 1984 attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine.
Copyright 2010  AFP American Edition
