POLICE have said an attack on a memorial to eight Protestant workmen killed by the IRA is being treated as a sectarian-motivated hate crime.
Paint was thrown over the Teebane memorial on the Drum Road in Cookstown between Monday night and Tuesday morning.
The workmen were killed when the IRA blew up their minibus at Teebane crossroads between Omagh and Cookstown in January 1992.
A bomb detonated under a van carrying them home from a British army barracks in Omagh. They were targeted because their firm carried out work for the security forces.
Police said yesterday it received a report that the memorial had been vandalised sometime overnight, and appealed for witnesses.
The attack is being treated as "a sectarian motivated hate crime at this time".
The memorial has been targeted numerous times. It was damaged in a paint attack in 2016, which victims' families said caused them "unbearable pain". Weeks earlier, floral tributes left at the memorial had been scattered across the road and destroyed by passing cars.
Ulster Unionist Cookstown councillor Trevor Wilson condemned the latest incident.
"I am utterly disgusted at the latest attack on the memorial to the eight Protestant workmen who were cruelly murdered by the IRA at Teebane crossroads just over 27 years ago," he said.
"In this latest attack the memorial has had paint thrown over it. Republicans often talk the language of rights and respect, but actions speak louder than words, and in Mid Ulster the Unionist community has learned down the years that for many republicans, we are entitled to no rights and no respect.
"Whoever committed this act of desecration at this memorial has nothing of value to contribute to any community or cause. They cannot respect the memory of eight men murdered as they returned home from a day's work, and they should not be surprised that all decent citizens will regard both them and their actions with utter contempt."
