VANCOUVER, (Reuters) – Canada’s government  apologized to the families of the 329 victims of the 1985 Air  India bombing yesterday, saying authorities failed in their  duty to prevent the tragedy.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered the apology at a  ceremony with the families in Toronto marking the 25th  anniversary of Flight 182’s destruction in what is still  history’s deadliest bombing of an airliner.

“This tragedy should not have happened, and 329 people  should not have perished in the sky that day in June, south of  Ireland,” Harper said in a statement.

An inquiry last week reported a “cascading series of  errors” by Canada’s police and spy agencies prevented them from  stopping the bombing and then hamstrung their largely fruitless  efforts to catch the bombers.

A suitcase bomb destroyed Air India Flight 182 off the  coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985, while the aircraft was en  route from Canada to India via London. Most of the victims were  Canadian citizens returning to India to visit relatives.

Their families have long complained about Canada’s handling  of case, but the government had refused calls for an apology.  There were mistakes in the case that the government “cannot  defend (and) has no wish to defend,” Harper said.

Police believe the attack was the work of Vancouver-based  Sikhs fighting for an independent homeland in India, who wanted  revenge for India’s deadly 1984 storming of the Golden Temple  in Amritsar, Sikhism’s holiest shrine.