A LARGE crowd gathered in Gobnascale earlier this evening to hear speeches and musical tributes to an IRA volunteer who died 30 years ago.
Kieran Fleming died in an IRA operation on December 2, 1984.
The youngest child of Maud and Paddy, he was raised on a loyalist estate in the Waterside.
He was arrested and imprisoned from an early age and spent his formative years in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh at the height of the Blanket Protest and the Hunger Strikes.
He played a major role in the Maze Escape of 1983 and on his escape from jail returned to the IRA. His cousin William, also an IRA Volunteer, was to die within four days when he was shot dead with Danny Doherty in the grounds of Gransha Hospital by the SAS.
Kieran drowned near Drumrush in County Fermanagh after a gun battle with the SAS.
One SAS soldier died. Antoine Mac Giolla Bhríghde, from south Derry, was later captured, handcuffed and executed.
Kieran Fleming drowned whilst trying to swim across a river after the gun battle.
Martin McGuinness and other Sinn Fein leaders were among the crowd in Gobnascale tonight.
