1993 Harrods bombing

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1993 Harrods bombing
Part of the Troubles
Brompton Rd, London looking north from Harrod's - geograph.org.uk - 2614.jpg
Brompton Road, looking north from Harrods in 1993
Location Knightsbridge, London, United Kingdom
Date28 January 1993
09:40 (UTC)
Target Harrods
Attack type
 Bomb
Deaths0
Injured4
Perpetrator Provisional Irish Republican Army

The 1993 Harrods bombing occurred on 28 January 1993 when a bomb exploded near the Harrods department store in London, England.

Contents

Background

The Provisional IRA began intensifying its bombings in London in 1992. A month before the Harrods bomb, on 10 December 1992 the IRA exploded two bombs in litter bins outside the Wood Green Shopping City centre injuring four police officers and seven civilians. [1] A week later on 17 December two more IRA bombs exploded in London outside shops injuring four people at Oxford Street and Cavendish Square. [2]

Bombing

On 28 January 1993 a bomb exploded near the Harrods department store in London, England. At 9:14, two telephoned warnings were issued, saying that two bombs had been planted: one outside and one inside Harrods. [3] The store was due to open at 10:00. [3] Police cordoned off the area and began a search. However, some bystanders ignored the police cordon. [3] At about 9:40, a package containing 1 lb (450 g) of Semtex exploded in a litter bin at the front of the store. [3] It injured four people and damaged the shopfront. [3] [4] The cost of damage and lost sales was estimated at £1 million. [5] Harrods was previously targeted by the IRA before, first two firebombs in August 1973 caused minor damage, [6] in 1974 the IRA's active service unit known as the Balcombe Street Gang exploded another firebomb gutting a clothes shop inside the store and injuring one member of staff and in 1983 a car bomb killed six (3 civilians and 3 police) and injured 90 people,the 1993 bomb was much smaller than the 1983 one.

Perpetrators

Those responsible were English Irish nationalist activists associated with the Provisional IRA: Jan Taylor, a 51-year-old former corporal who had served in the British Army Royal Signals Corps, and Patrick Hayes, a 41-year-old computer programmer of Irish descent, with a degree in business studies from Polytechnic of Central London and a member of Red Action. [4] [5]

In March 1993, police captured them at Hayes' home in Stoke Newington, London. [7] They each received prison sentences of 30 years for the January Harrods bombing and for a second attack on a train a month later which caused extensive damage but no casualties. Hayes was also convicted of conspiracy to cause three additional explosions in 1992. Neither man had any apparent links to Ireland beyond their "unswerving support for the IRA". [8] Both were released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

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The Chelsea Barracks bombing was an attack carried out by a London-based Active Service Unit (ASU) of the Provisional IRA on 10 October 1981, using a remote-controlled nail bomb. The bomb targeted a bus carrying British Army soldiers just outside Chelsea Barracks. The blast killed two civilians and injured 40 people, among them 23 soldiers.

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The Baltic Exchange bombing was an attack by the Provisional IRA on the City of London, Britain's financial centre, on 10 April 1992, the day after the General Election which re-elected John Major from the Conservative Party as Prime Minister. The one-ton bomb – concealed in a van and consisting of a fertilizer device wrapped with a detonation cord made from 100 lb (45 kg) of semtex – was the biggest bomb detonated on mainland Britain since World War II. The bombing killed three people, injured 91 others, and severely damaged the Baltic Exchange and its surroundings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1993 Camden Town bombing</span> IRA attack in, London, England

The 1993 Camden Town bombing occurred on 27 February 1993, when a bomb exploded in Camden High Street, injuring 18 people. The Provisional IRA was responsible, planting the explosive in a litter bin and targeting people on the busiest day of the week, Saturday, after midday. One of the injured was Swedish tourist Jennie Erikson, 22. The IRA gave a coded telephone warning that a bomb was planted at a Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food store in the north end of High Street, near Camden Lock Market. Police unknowingly moved people towards the bomb's path in the south end 400 yards away. Scotland Yard chief Bernard Luckhurst said the misleading warnings of the bomb were "clearly designed" to kill or injure as many as it could.

On 12 October 1992, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a bomb that had been planted in the gents' toilets in the Sussex Arms pub in Upper St Martins Lane near Long Acre, London, killing a man and injuring seven other people.

The 1974 Bristol bombing was a twin bomb attack carried out by the Provisional IRA in a shopping street in Bristol city centre on 18 December 1974. A bomb was placed in a holdall outside Dixons Photographic shop on Park Street which exploded just before 8 pm. Nine minutes later another more powerful bomb detonated in a dustbin 30 yards away. The blasts injured 20 people and was part of the IRA's bombing campaign in England. The IRA gave a telephone warning for the first bomb but not the second one.

On 14 November 1992, 3.2 tonnes of explosives was discovered during a routine check on a lorry travelling on Stoke Newington Road, part of the A10, one of the main routes between London and the north. The Volvo lorry was stopped by police around 1 am; the occupants fled. Constable Raymond Hall - a former Royal Engineer soldier and Falklands War veteran - chased the suspects to a residential street, Belgrade Road no.7 where he was shot twice by one of them. Shortly afterwards police arrested one man, Irish lorry driver Patrick Kelly, a member of the Provisional IRA, who was alleged to have been driving the lorry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1993 Finchley Road bombings</span> Provisional IRA attack in London, England

The Finchley Road bombings occurred on 2 October 1993, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated three time bombs on Finchley Road in north London, England. Telephoned warnings were sent six minutes beforehand, at approximately 00:26 UTC, but five people were injured from falling glass as a result of the blasts, and damage was caused to some shops and flats in the surrounding area. The three bombs were planted outside a Domino's Pizza restaurant, a travel agent, and offices of the St. Pancras Building Society. Later, anti-terrorist officers discovered and subsequently safely detonated a fourth bomb in a controlled environment, 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the initial bombings, in Golders Green. Two days later, on 4 October, the IRA detonated four more bombs in north London, two in Tottenham Lane and two more in Archway Road resulting in four injuries.

References

  1. ↑ Bennett, Will (11 December 1992). "Police and shoppers injured in bomb blasts". The Independent. Independent Digital News & Media Ltd. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  2. ↑ Schmidt, William E (17 December 1992). "4 Hurt as 2 I.R.A. Bombs Go Off on Busy London Shopping Street". The New York Times. New York City. Retrieved 5 January 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Bennett, Will (29 January 1993). "Four hurt by IRA bomb outside Harrods – UK, News" . The Independent. London, UK. Archived from the original on 1 May 2022. Retrieved 19 February 2010.
  4. 1 2 Geraghty, Tony (2000). The Irish War: the hidden conflict between the IRA and British Intelligence . JHUPress. p.  163. ISBN   0-8018-6456-9.
  5. 1 2 Seaton, Matt (29 January 1995). "Charge of the New Red Brigade" . The Independent. London, UK. Archived from the original on 1 May 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  6. ↑ Shuster, Alvin (25 August 1973). "2 IN LONDON HURT BY A LETTER BOMB;High Stock Exchange Aide Injured—Scotland Yard Officially Blames I.R.A." The New York Times. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  7. ↑ Mickolus, Edward (1997). Terrorism, 1992–1995: a chronology of events and a selectively annotated bibliography. Greenwood Press. p. 282. ISBN   0-313-30468-8.
  8. ↑ Ward, Stephen (13 May 1994). "'Proud' IRA bombers jailed for 30 years: Police remain mystified why two Englishmen, who had no apparent connections with Ireland, became terrorists" . The Independent. London, UK. Archived from the original on 1 May 2022. Retrieved 28 April 2018.

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