Newry customs bombing | |
---|---|
Part of the Troubles | |
Location | Newry County Armagh, Northern Ireland |
Date | 22 August 1972 |
Target | Newry customs office |
Attack type | Time bomb |
Deaths | 9 (6 civilians 3 IRA volunteers) |
Injured | 20 |
Perpetrator | Provisional IRA |
On 22 August 1972 a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, an Irish republican paramilitary group, detonated prematurely at a customs office in Newry. Three IRA members killed six civilians and themselves in the explosion. The event was one of the bloodiest of 1972, the deadliest year of the Troubles. [1] [2]
Since 1971, the Provisional IRA had been waging a campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland. Gun and bomb attacks became daily occurrences in the province as the campaign continued. In January 1972, soldiers from the Parachute Regiment shot dead 14 civil rights protesters in Derry, in an event later known as Bloody Sunday. The attack enraged the nationalist community and as a result support for the IRA surged. In the following months the ferocity of the conflict, and as a result number of casualties, rose dramatically.
Military installations and civilian businesses were targeted frequently. Civilians often fell victim to the IRA's attacks. This most prominently occurred on Bloody Friday, when at least 20 bombs planted by the IRA exploded in quick succession in Belfast. As a result of the bombs, 9 people were killed and another 130 injured.
Newry, a mainly nationalist town near the Irish border, had a lot of IRA supporters. Attacks had already taken place in the town, leading to seven people - three civilians, two police officers, one British soldier and one IRA volunteer - being killed. [3] [4] [5] [6]
Three IRA members walked into the office with a bomb. It exploded prematurely, killing all of them, two lorry drivers and four customs staff. [7] [8]
From 1969 until 1997, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) conducted an armed paramilitary campaign primarily in Northern Ireland and England, aimed at ending British rule in Northern Ireland in order to create a united Ireland.
The Troubles in Ardoyne lists incidents during the Troubles in the Ardoyne district of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The Derry Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) operated in the city of Derry, Northern Ireland, and its surroundings during the Troubles. The Derry Brigade was one of the most active groups in the IRA.
On Tuesday evening 18 November 1975 an Irish Republican Army (IRA) unit nicknamed the Balcombe Street Gang, without warning, threw a bomb into Walton's Restaurant in Walton Street, Knightsbridge, London, killing two people and injuring almost two dozen others.
The Battle of Lenadoon was a series of gun battles fought over a six day period from 9–14 July 1972 between the Provisional IRA and the British Army. It started on Thursday, 9 July 1972 in and around the Lenadoon Avenue area and spread to other places in Belfast. Loyalist paramilitaries and the Official Irish Republican Army were involved in some of the incidents. 28 people in total were killed in Belfast according to the CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths. The violence ended a two-week truce between the forces of the British Government and the IRA.
On Thursday 9 October 1975, a bomb attack just outside Green Park Underground station in the City of Westminster, London, left one man dead and injured 20 others. The attack was carried out by volunteers from the Provisional IRA's Balcombe Street Gang. The attack occurred during a period of heightened activity by the IRA in England and in particular London and surrounding areas, since the Caterham Arms pub bombing two months earlier in August 1975.
The Provisional IRA carried out two separate attacks on the same day on 1 May 1988 against British military personnel in the Netherlands which resulted in the deaths of three RAF members and another three being injured. It was the worst attack suffered by the British security forces during The Troubles from 1969 to 1998 in mainland Europe.
On 11 August 1970, two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers were killed by a booby-trap bomb planted under a car by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) near Crossmaglen, in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. They were the first RUC officers to be killed by republicans during the Troubles and the first security forces to be killed in South Armagh, an IRA stronghold for much of the conflict.
On 18 February 1991 two Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs exploded at London mainline stations, one at Victoria station and the other at Paddington station, killing one person and injuring 38 other people at Victoria station. It was the IRA's second major attack in London in February 1991 after the Downing Street mortar attack eleven days earlier which was an attempt to assassinate the British War cabinet and the British prime minister John Major. It was also the first IRA attack against a civilian target in England since the 1983 Harrods bombing, marking a strategic change in their bombing campaign in England.
On 2 October 1975, the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) carried out a wave of shootings and bombings across Northern Ireland. Six of the attacks left 12 people dead and around 45 people injured. There was also an attack in a small village in County Down called Killyleagh. There were five attacks in and around Belfast which left people dead. A bomb which exploded in Coleraine left four UVF members dead. There were also several other smaller bombs planted around Northern Ireland but other than causing damage they did not kill or injure anyone.
On 25 and 27 November 1974 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) placed several bombs in pillar boxes and one in a hedge behind a pillar box. This was a new tactic used by the IRA in England, although a similar tactic had been used in Northern Ireland during The Troubles several times previously. 40 people were wounded from five explosions in several districts.
The Belturbet bombing occurred on 28 December 1972 when a car bomb planted by Loyalist paramilitaries exploded in the main street in the border town of Belturbet in County Cavan in the Republic of Ireland. The bomb killed two teenagers Geraldine O'Reilly (15) and Patrick Stanley (16). Nobody claimed responsibility for the bombing but security services believe the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) carried out the attack. The attack happened just a few weeks after two people were killed and 127 injured when two car bombs exploded in the centre of Dublin, Republic of Ireland on 1 December 1972. On the same day as the Belturbet bombing, two other bombs exploded in border counties, the first in Clones, County Monaghan which injured two people and the second in Pettigo in County Donegal which caused injury to a single female victim. The three bombs all exploded within 49 minutes of each other, all three bombings were believed to be part of a co-ordinated attack attributed to a single organization.
In the late hours of 3 February and the early hours of 4 February 1973, six men, all of whom were Catholics, were shot and killed in the New Lodge area of north Belfast:
The Central Bar bombing was a bomb attack on a pub in the town of Gilford near Portadown in County Down in Northern Ireland on 31 December 1975. The attack was carried out by members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) using the covername "People's Republican Army" although contemporary reports also said the "Armagh unit" of the "People's Republican Army" had claimed responsibility. Three Protestant civilians were killed in the bombing.
The Official IRA's Belfast Brigade was founded in December 1969 after the Official IRA itself emerged in December 1969, shortly after the beginning of the Troubles, when the Irish Republican Army split into two factions. The other was the Provisional IRA. The "Officials" were Marxist-Leninists and worked to form a united front with other Irish communist groups, named the Irish National Liberation Front (NLF). The Brigade like the pre-split IRA brigade before the split had three battalions, one in West Belfast, one in North Belfast and the third in East Belfast. The Belfast Brigade was involved in most of the biggest early confrontations of the conflict like the Falls Curfew in 1970, the battles that followed after the introduction of Internment without trial in 1971 and Volunteers joined forces with the Provisional brigade to fight the British Army and UVF during the Battle at Springmartin in 1972. The first Commanding Officer (CO) of the brigade was veteran Billy McMillen who fought during the IRA Border Campaign. Shortly after the death of Official IRA Belfast "Staff Captain" Joe McCann in April 1972, the battalion structure of the brigade was done away with and command centralized under McMillen.
The following is a timeline of actions during The Troubles which took place in the Republic of Ireland between 1969 and 1998. It includes Ulster Volunteer Force bombings such as the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in May 1974, and other Loyalist bombings carried out in the 1970s, 80s & 90s, the last of which was in 1997. These attacks killed dozens of people and injured hundreds more. Also actions carried out by Irish Republicans including bombings, prison escapes, kidnappings, and gun battles between the Gardaí (police) and the Irish Defence Forces against Republican gunmen from the Irish National Liberation Army, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and a socialist-revolutionary group, Saor Éire. These attacks killed a number of civilians, police, soldiers, and Republican paramilitaries.
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.
Paul Marlowe was a Volunteer in the Provisional IRA's Belfast Brigade. He held the rank of Training Officer (T/O) when he and two other experienced Volunteers, Frank Fitzsimons and Joey Surgenor, were killed when a bomb they were planting exploded prematurely at Belfast gasworks in October 1976. Marlowe was 31 and had a wife and three children when he died.
This is a timeline of actions by the Official Irish Republican Army, an Irish republican & Marxist-Leninist paramilitary group. Most of these actions took place as part of a Guerrilla campaign against the British Army & Royal Ulster Constabulary and internal Irish Republican feuds with the Provisional IRA & Irish National Liberation Army from the early 1970s - to the mid-1970s during the most violent phase of "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland.