Political leaders spent time reflecting on some of the victims of Northern Ireland's troubles during a special radio programme broadcast on Friday morning.

They read extracts from the book Lost Lives which tells the story of the 3,500 people killed during three decades of violence.

United States President Bill Clinton remembered Maura Monaghan aged 18 months who died on 15 August 1998.

Maura was the youngest victim of the horrific bombing in Omagh, County Tyrone which claimed the lives of 29 people and injured more than 300 others.

The bomb claimed three generations of Maura's family.

She died alongside her mother Avril, 30, from Aughadarna, County Tyrone as they went on a shopping trip to Omagh. Avril's unborn twins also died in the blast.

Maura's grandmother Mary Grimes, 65, who was from Beragh in County Tyrone was also killed.

The tragedy, which touched so many lives, happened as hundreds of people were moved away from the town's courthouse, following a bomb warning.

The bomb exploded in an area where people thought they were safe.

It was the province's worst single terrorist attack carried out by dissident republican group the Real IRA, which called a ceasefire soon after the atrocity.

The group split from the Provisional IRA last year after the IRA declared a ceasefire.

Sectarian arson attack

British Prime Minister Tony Blair recalled the horrific fate of the young Quinn brothers who died on 12 July 1998.

Richard, 11, Mark, nine, and Jason, eight, died in a sectarian arson attack at their house in Ballymoney, County Antrim.

They were brought up as Protestants even though their mother was a Catholic.

The petrol bomb attack, in which two other people escaped injury, took place during a week of tension in the province.

At the time thousands of Orangemen were protesting at Drumcree against an order a week earlier banning them from parading down the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown, County Armagh.

The murders had a profound impact on a number of leading Orangemen since it took place on the most significant day in the loyalist marching season.

One man, Garfield Gilmour was convicted of the murders, and was ordered to serve three terms of life imprisonment.

He admitted he had driven the car used, but claimed the attack was directly carried out by three members of the outlawed loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force.

No warning car bombs

Irish Premier Bertie Ahern reflected on the 33 people who died in no warning loyalist car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan in May 1974.

Two bombs exploded in Dublin kiling 26 people including a pregnant woman. Some 90 minutes later another exploded in the border town of Monaghan killing seven people.

More than 200 people were injured. No-one was ever charged.

In 1993 the Ulster Volunteer Force admitted the attacks.

The bombings took place while loyalist workers were on strike in Northern Ireland in an attempt to bring down the Sunningdale power-sharing agreement.

In August this year, the Irish Victim's Commission called for an independent inquiry into the bombings.

IRA murder a cleaner

First Minister David Trimble looked back at the IRA murder of Frederick Anthony on May 13 1994.

Mr Anthony, 38, and a Protestant was a cleaner in an RUC station in Lurgan, County Armagh.

He was killed by an IRA booby-trap bomb under his Skoda car as he drove past Hill Street Presbyterian Church in the town.

His wife and two children were in the car.

Mrs Anthony and her nine-year-old son escaped with minor injuries, but her three-year-old daughter spent a week in a coma.

Both her legs were broken and a piece of shrapnel had lodged close to her brain.

Doctors did not believe her chances of survival were good and her subsequent recovery was considered miraculous.

Frederick Anthony's mother was treated in hospital after being told of her son's death.

Mrs Anthony later expressed her sympathy for the family of a young Catholic man, Martin L'Estrange, who was shot dead in Lurgan in August 1994.