Strabane ambush

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Strabane ambush
Part of the Troubles and Operation Banner
Plumbridge Co. Tyrone - geograph.org.uk - 130535.jpg
Near the ambush site
Date23 February 1985
Location 54°49′48″N7°28′12″W / 54.83000°N 7.47000°W / 54.83000; -7.47000
Result British victory
Belligerents
IrishRepublicanFlag.png Provisional IRA
IRA West Tyrone Brigade

Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom

Commanders and leaders
Charles Breslin
Strength
3 IRA Volunteers 8
Casualties and losses
3 killed None
Relief Map of Northern Ireland.png
Red pog.svg
Ambush at Strabane

The Strabane Ambush was a British Special Air Service ambush against a three man Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) unit. All three members of the IRA unit were killed in the ambush. At the time it was the most successful SAS operation against the IRA, until the Loughgall ambush two years later in 1987 in which eight IRA volunteers were killed. [1]

Contents

Background

Strabane was one of the IRA's most deadly strongholds during The Troubles. IRA and Irish National Liberation Army Volunteers in Strabane carried out attack after attack against the British security forces; between 1971 and 1991 16 attacks were launched by Irish Republicans against British troops and RUC police which resulted in the death of at least one member of the British security forces in each of those attacks, the British Army and RUC bases in Strabane were constantly attacked with sniper fire, bombings, grenades, mortar attacks and RPG attacks. Strabane was once the most bombed town in Europe in proportion to its size, and was the most bombed town in Northern Ireland. [2] [3]

A few weeks earlier in December 1984, the Special Air Service (SAS) carried out two ambushes against the Provisional IRA Derry Brigade which killed four IRA volunteers, in the first in the Kesh ambush Kieran Fleming and another IRA volunteer was killed, four days later Kieran's cousin William Fleming and Danny Doherty were killed in another ambush. [4] [5]

Ambush

On the 23 February 1985, an IRA active service unit while returning weapons or bringing new weapons to an arms cache in Plumbridge Road in Strabane were suddenly ambushed by British Army SAS unit and all three IRA volunteers were killed on the spot. [6] Local witness said they heard that no warning to surrender was given by the SAS as the men entered a field which is when the SAS unit fired over 100 rounds at the Volunteers killing them instantly. [7] The IRA volunteers killed at Strabane were unit Commander Charles Breslin (21) and Michael Devine (22) and his brother David Devine (16). David Devine was the youngest IRA volunteer killed in the conflict. [8]

Aftermath

This ambush was the first in several high-profile SAS and undercover soldier ambushes and operations between 1985 – 1992 especially targeting the IRA's units around the Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh borders. A year later the IRA's Fermanagh commander Séamus McElwaine was killed during an ambush, [9] and in 1987 eight volunteers from the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade were killed in the Loughgall ambush, [10] in 1988 three volunteers were killed during Operation Flavius in Gibraltar, [11] that August three more IRA men were killed in the ambush at Drumnakilly, [12] in 1991 three more volunteers were killed in the Coagh ambush [13] and finally in February 1992 in the Clonoe ambush four IRA volunteers were killed. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade</span> Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

The East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), also known as the Tyrone/Monaghan Brigade was one of the most active republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland during "the Troubles". It is believed to have drawn its membership from across the eastern side of County Tyrone as well as north County Monaghan and south County Londonderry.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambush at Drumnakilly</span> Ambush

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loughgall ambush</span> 1987 British ambush in Northern Ireland

The Loughgall ambush took place on 8 May 1987 in the village of Loughgall, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. An eight-man unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched an attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base in the village. An IRA member drove a digger with a bomb in its bucket through the perimeter fence, while the rest of the unit arrived in a van and fired on the building. The bomb exploded and destroyed almost half of the base. Soldiers from the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS) then returned fire both from within the base and from hidden positions around it in a pre-planned ambush, killing all of the attackers. Two of them were subsequently found to have been unarmed when they were killed.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clonoe ambush</span> 1992 SAS-IRA clash in Northern Ireland

The Clonoe Ambush was a military action between the British Army and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) that occurred during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. On 16 February 1992, an IRA unit attacked the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) security base in the village of Coalisland in County Tyrone, and was ambushed shortly afterwards by the Special Air Service (SAS) in the grounds of a church in the village of Clonoe whilst attempting to make its escape, resulting in several IRA fatalities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coagh ambush</span> 1991 SAS ambush in Northern Ireland

The Coagh ambush was a military confrontation that took place in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on 3 June 1991, during The Troubles, when a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) active service unit from its East Tyrone Brigade was ambushed by the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS) at the village of Coagh, in County Tyrone, whilst on its way to kill a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). The ambush resulted in the deaths of all three IRA men involved.

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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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1975 Piccadilly bombing</span> Bomb attack near Green Park Underground station, London

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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 1986, the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacked the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base at The Birches near Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The unmanned base was raked with gunfire before being destroyed by a 200 pounds (91 kg) bomb, which was driven through the gate of the base in the bucket of a JCB digger.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Lodge Six shooting</span> 1973 mass shooting in Belfast

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:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kesh ambush</span>

On 2 December 1984, a four-man Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) active service unit was ambushed by a British Army Special Air Service team while attempting to bomb a Royal Ulster Constabulary patrol who they had lured to Drumrush Lodge Restaurant. Two IRA volunteers and one SAS soldier were killed during the action.

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.

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.

The following is a Timeline of British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) undercover operations during Operation Banner during the 1969 – 1998 Northern Irish conflict in Northern Ireland that resulted in death or injury. Including operations by the SAS, 14 Intelligence Company, the Military Reaction Force (MRF), RUC Special Patrol Group and Special Branch.

Declan Arthurs was a Volunteer in the Provisional IRA's (IRA), East Tyrone Brigade in the mid-1980s. He was killed in the Loughgall ambush.

References

  1. Neville, Leigh (2016) The SAS 1983–2014 Bloomsbury Publishing, p.15. ISBN   1472814053
  2. "Strabane town centre baseline report | Strabane Town Centre Regeneration Masterplan" (PDF). 8 September 2010. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  3. "How one gay bar changed attitudes in rural N Ireland". Channel 4 News. Retrieved 8 November 2018.
  4. "British Troops Ambush And Kill 2 I.R.A. Men". New York Times . 7 December 1984. Retrieved 21 March 2007.
  5. Lost Lives, 2007 edition, p. 1002, ISBN   978-1-84018-504-1
  6. "CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1985". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  7. "23 February 1985 – Three Strabane IRA Volunteers cut down by hail of SAS bullets". An Phoblacht. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  8. I nDil Chuimhne - Tirghra: Ireland's Patriot Dead pp.270 - 272
  9. Urban, Mark (1993). Big Boys' Rules: SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA. Faber and Faber. pp. 218–219. ISBN   0-571-16809-4.
  10. "CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1987". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  11. "CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1988". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  12. "CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1988". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  13. "CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1991". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  14. "CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1992". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Retrieved 6 November 2018.

Further reading