Charles visits great-uncle's murder site

Britain's Prince Charles has spoken of his "anguish" at the murder of his godfather by IRA paramilitaries in 1979 as he became the first royal to visit the assassination site in Ireland.

Charles remembered Lord Louis Mountbatten as "the grandfather I never had" on an emotional trip to the rugged coastline, saying he understood the suffering of the Irish people in "a profound way".

The British Union Jack flag and the Irish tricolour flew side by side on Wednesday on the main street in Mullaghmore, the seaside village from where Mountbatten and his family set off on a boat which was later blown up by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb.

"At the time I could not imagine how we would come to terms with the anguish of such a deep loss," Charles said.

"Through this dreadful experience I now understand in a profound way the agonies borne by others on these islands of whatever faith or political persuasion."

Mountbatten, Charles' great-uncle, his mother Queen Elizabeth II's cousin and the last viceroy of British-ruled India, was 79 when he was killed.

Two relatives, one of them Charles' teenage godson, and a 15-year-old local boy also died in the attack.

Mountbatten's grandson, Timothy Knatchbull, who survived the blast but whose 14-year-old twin brother Nicholas was killed, met Charles in Mullaghmore along with local resident Peter McHugh, who helped bring the bodies ashore.

There has been a gradual process of reconciliation since the 1998 Good Friday Agreements which formally put an end to three decades of civil unrest known as The Troubles in which 3,500 people died.

In a further sign of thawing relations, the 66-year-old heir to the throne on Tuesday became the first royal to meet Irish republican leader Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the now defunct IRA.

A few hours after the Mullaghmore attack, 18 British soldiers were killed in an IRA ambush across the border in Northern Ireland, in one of the deadliest days of the conflict.

Charles and his wife Camilla have been met with crowds of cheering onlookers during their two-day visit to Ireland, as well as a small protest on Tuesday.

His handshake with Adams came after the historic meeting in 2012 between Queen Elizabeth II and Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, former IRA commander Martin McGuinness.

As he spoke in Sligo, Charles recalled remarks made by his mother in 2011 when she became the first British monarch to visit Ireland since it gained independence from Britain in 1922.

"We all have regrets. As my mother said at Dublin Castle, with the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all," Charles said.

"I'm only too deeply aware of the long history of suffering which Ireland has endured.

"The recent years have shown us that healing is possible."