Three other RUC officers who were in the building fled through a back door. IRA volunteers had been lying in wait outside the barracks and, as the officers left, two gunmen stepped out of concealed positions and shot both officers in the head from close range. war situation in which the legitimate army of the Irish Republic was [17] The eight volunteers killed in the ambush became known as the "Loughgall Martyrs" among many republicans. On 30 August, an SAS ambush killed IRA members Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin as they tried to kill an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment member near Carrickmore. 1920. Jim Lynagh ( Irish: Samus Laighneach; 13 April 1956 - 8 May 1987) was a member of the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), [1] from Monaghan Town in the Republic of Ireland . CAIN Listing of Programmes for the Year: 1997 UTV News, 9 July 1997. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Provisional_IRA_East_Tyrone_Brigade&oldid=1134254089, 14 September 1971: a British soldier (John Rudman, aged 21) was shot dead while on mobile patrol, Edendork, near. . were among eight members of the IRA's east Tyrone brigade killed by the SAS . set the example, provided the inspiration. Another street fracas on 17 May between a King's Own Scottish Borderers platoon and a group of nationalist youths in Coalisland resulted in the theft of an army machine gun and a new confrontation with the paratroopers. The more British violence could be seen as Read more about this topic: Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade, Subsequent Brigade Activity. themselves the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner? Another street fracas five days later, on 17 May, between a King's Own Scottish Borderers platoon and a group of nationalist youths in Coalisland resulted in the theft of an army machine gun and a new confrontation with the paratroopers. The SAS shot dead eight IRA members and a civilian who had accidentally driven into the ambush. See this British Commons account about the NI violence for the first month of 1990: See the May 12 and May 17 entries at the 1992 CAIN chronology: Fortnight, Issues 324-334, Fortnight Publications, 1994, Articles incorporating text from Wikipedia, Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign 19691997, "SAS shooting 'destroyed deadly IRA unit'", http://archives.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2001/05/05/story11832.asp, http://sluggerotoole.com/2011/12/02/loughgall-terrorists-could-not-have-been-arrested/, http://www.midulstermail.co.uk/news/local/gaa-distances-itself-from-ira-commemorations-1-3753356, "Calculating, professional enemy that faces KOSB", http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/calculating-professional-enemy-that-faces-kosb-1.598672, "Land Mine Kills 7 British Soldiers on Bus in Ulster", http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/21/world/ira-claims-killing-of-8-soldiers-as-it-steps-up-attacks-on-british.html, "IRA Claims Killing of 8 Soldiers As It Steps Up Attacks on British", Ex-Para 'led attack by IRA which killed Scots soldiers', Fears of new IRA atrocity after attack on helicopter, CAIN - Listing of Programmes for the Year: 1992-UTV news, 31 January 1992, CAIN - Listing of Programmes for the Year: 1993 - BBC news, 26 April 1993 and UTV news, 29 April 1993, CAIN - Listing of Programmes for the Year: 1992 - BBC news, 5 March 1992, The Irish Emigrant - May 18, 1992: New Paratroop Controversy, "I.R.A. One of the workers killed, Robert Dunseath, was also a soldier of the Royal Irish Rangers. [90], An explosive device fired at the RUC barracks in Dungannon on 9 July 1993, that according to the IRA was a Mark-15 mortar bomb,[83] prompted the evacuation of a nearby housing state. persons convicted of criminal offenses as prisoners of war, Margaret husbands and fathers -- had been needlessly shot in a show of Indeed, members of the security forces had said that we done what they couldn't do, we put the East Tyrone brigade of the IRA on the run. Dozens of residents were evacuated to a neighbouring church's hall. The East Tyrone Brigade members killed at Loughgall in 1987 consisted of: * Commander Patrick Kelly (aged 30) * Jim Lynagh (aged 31) * Pdraig McKearney (aged 32) * Declan Arthurs (aged 21) * Seamus Donnelly (aged 19) * Eugene Kelly (aged 25) * Gerry O'Callaghan (aged 29) * Tony Gormley (aged 25) Eugene Kelly Five were bound over. There was also an element of benign triumphalism in official Two IRA men got away from the scene, but the four named above were killed. [39] A second shooting took place in the village of Pomeroy on 28 June, this time against British regular troops. of its own medicine, that the security forces were, in a sense, only The IRA claimed the man was a UVF commander, responsible for the killings of Catholic civilians. Famous quotes . [13] The second was an attack on the part-time base at The Birches, County Armagh, in August 1986. We can end the denial of our rights in relation to Brexit, the Irish language, a border poll and legacy issues, with your support. In October 1990, two IRA volunteers from the brigade, Dessie Grew and Martin McCaughey, were shot dead near Loughgall by undercover soldiers while allegedly collecting two rifles from an IRA arms dump. with firepower ferociously excessive for the occasion invoked folk The SAS shot dead eight IRA members and a civilian who had accidentally driven into the ambush. As the men were all Protestants, many Protestants saw it as a sectarian attack. An Phoblacht claims that the IRA men thwarted an ambush and at least two SAS members were killed. there for the Irish people. The later attack led to allegations that the IRA was killing Protestant land-owners in Tyrone and Fermanagh in an orchestrated campaign to drive Protestants out of the region. When the IRA responded by killing a retired UDR member, Leslie Dallas,[120] and two elderly Protestants, Austin Nelson and Ernest Rankin at Coagh, on 7 March 1989, the UVF shot dead three IRA members and a Catholic civilian in a pub in Cappagh on 3 March 1991. the people. The IRA unit used the same tactics as it had done in The Birches attack. In April 1987 the brigade shot and killed Harold Henry, one of the main building contractors to the security forces in Northern Ireland. Two RUC officers were shot dead and the base was raked with gunfire before being destroyed by a bomb. Early in the morning as he prepared to drive to work, two masked IRA gunmen who had been hiding behind trees walked over and shot him three times in the head, mortally wounding him. 9 July 1997: IRA gunmen hijacked and burned a number of vehicles at Dungannon. [50] The RUC stated the men were on their way to mount an ambush on Protestant workmen. attack. One RUC officer was injured. As always, constitutional nationalists put the matter in the context of ambush. [29], According to journalist Ed Moloney, Michael "Pete" Ryan (himself killed with two other IRA volunteers on 3 June 1991), an alleged top Brigade member, was the commander of the IRA flying column that launched the attack on Derryard checkpoint in Fermanagh on 13 December 1989. killed the IRA men in a shoot-out but had mercilessly massacred them disposal. They could have been arrested but the SAS planned to take [85] On 30 April, a heavy horizontal mortar was fired at an RUC patrol vehicle near Ballygawley roundabout; the round missed its target and hit a wall. [51], Another four IRA members were killed in an ambush in February 1992. A second shooting took place in the village of Pomeroy on 28 June, this time against British regular troops. [15][16] It destroyed a substantial part of the base with a 200lb bomb and raked the building with gunfire. their lives, and out of the sacrifice would come a greater number of [17], However, many of their remaining activists were young and inexperienced and fell into further ambushes leading to very high casualties by the standards of the low intensity guerrilla conflict in Northern Ireland. murder.). The bomb exploded ten minutes later, destroying the barracks. See: Attack on UDR Clogher barracks . British government acceding to the IRAs view that what was happening On 11 February 1990 the brigade managed to shoot down a British Army Gazelle helicopter near Clogher by machine gun fire and wounding three soldiers, one of them seriously. with an unchangeable, unambivalent internal code of its own, of people The next day the IRA threatened any contractor who took on repair of the station. On 30 August 1988, an SAS ambush killed IRA members Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin as they tried to kill an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment member near Carrickmore. months of 1987, forty-seven persons had died violently, fifteen of them security forces strike back and seem to do so, its editorial declared, [65][66][67] Six paratroopers were charged with criminal damage in the aftermath, but were acquitted in 1993. The IRA retaliated on 5 August 1991, when they shot and killed a former UDR soldier while living his workplace along Altmore Road, also in Cappagh. [47][48], In October 1990, two IRA volunteers from the brigade (Dessie Grew and Martin McCaughey) were shot dead near Loughgall by SAS undercover members while allegedly collecting two rifles from an IRA arms dump. 8 July 1997: A landmine was planted by the IRA near Dungannon, leading to a bomb alert. Major Shaw died at the scene. Several people was evacuated, and the bomb disposal squad struggled 10 hours to defuse the device. There were no injuries. For though it was clear that the IRA had [127] A former UDR soldier (David Martin) was killed when an IRA bomb exploded underneath his car in Kildress, County Tyrone on 25 April 1993; it was claimed that he had loyalist connections. of active service units, an incapacitating dilution of its manpower and [81] The IRA asserts instead that the barracks were "extensively damaged". There was, of course, the inevitable historical analogue that would [30] Journalist Ian Bruce claims that an unidentified Irishman who had served in the Parachute Regiment was the leader of the IRA unit, citing intelligence sources. The UDA retaliated by shooting dead five Catholic male civilians inside a betting shop on the Ormeau Road, Belfast. [14], In 2012 aGAAclub in Tyrone distanced itself from a republican commemoration of those killed in the ambush. They had mounted a heavy DShK machine gun on the back of a stolen lorry, driven right to the RUC/British Army station and opened fire with tracer ammunition at the fortified base at point-blank range, when the long-range of the weapon would enable them to fire from a safe distance. The priest presiding over the requiem mass for O'Donnell had been released without charges for possession of weapons on two different occasions in the past. of their neighbors, hard-working decent members of their communities, Both Lost Lives and the Sutton Index of Deaths (at CAIN) list him as a civilian. British military sources reported that other IRA volunteers from East Tyrone were involved in the assault. Jim Lynagh (Irish language: Samus Laighneach 13 April 1956 - 8 May 1987) was a member of the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), [1] from Monaghan Town in the Republic of Ireland. 5 February 1997: An IRA unit fired a horizontal mortar at a British patrol on Newell Road in Dungannon. engaged in an armed conflict with the army of the United Kingdom. This was the IRA's greatest loss of life in a single incident since the days of the Anglo-Irish War (19191922). rather than as a criminal organization whose members would be arrested, The Auxiliaries, Republicans were reminded in An Phoblacht/Republican The ambush took place outside the village of Pomeroy. The East Tyrone Brigade members killed in 1987 consisted of: Commander Patrick Kelly (aged 30) Jim Lynagh (aged 31) Padraig McKearney (aged 32) Declan Arthurs (aged 21) Seamus Donnelly (aged 19) Eugene Kelly (aged 25) Gerry O'Callaghan (aged 29) Tony Gormley (aged 25) launched what was supposed to be a surprise attack on the local RUC . triumphalist importunings of the old enemy. After the shooting they drove past the house of Tony Doris, the IRA man killed the previous year, where they fired more shots in the air and were heard to shout, "Up the 'RA, that's for Tony Doris". violence of the British government became the bad violence; the (The Times set the tone: Occasions on which the This was denied by the dead man's family. [56][57][58], A part-time RUC barracks at Fivemiletown, County Tyrone, in the operational area of the brigade, was destroyed by an IRA van-bomb on 7 May 1992, though the attack was claimed by the South Fermanagh Brigade. In the small villages of Armagh and Tyrone they understood. gone to Loughgall with courage and skill and above all with The base was raked with gunfire and a JCB digger with a 200lb (91kg) bomb in its bucket was driven through the perimeter fence. insinuations, widely believed, that the security forces had not just [79] The facilities targeted by "Barrack Buster" mortars included the above-mentioned Ballygawley barracks, a British Army border outpost at Aughnacloy,[80] the RUC barracks at Clogher[81] and Beragh,[80] both resulting in massive damage but no fatalities; two attacks on the RUC base in Caledon, which was also hit by gunfire in the second attack,[81][82] and the RUC compounds at Dungannon,[83] Fintona,[81] Carrickmore,[81] and Pomeroy. He would be the longest-serving volunteer in this position, right up to the 1997 ceasefire. *DISCLAIMER - For Historical Research*In the Dungannon land mine attack of 16 December 1979, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambushed two British. comparisons with the past. The East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), also known as the Tyrone/Monaghan Brigade[ 1] was one of the most active republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland during "the Troubles". Her extradition from Northern Ireland was eventually denied in 2007 due to discrepancies in the claims against her. maintained a system of mutual support and an assiduous sense of The bomb detonated, destroying much of the base and damaging nearby buildings. be holding up to emulate a man who was out to commit cruel cold They should have arrested (In the first four The Gazelle broke up during the subsequent crash-landing. Your Market News for trending stories from around the world. [60], From mid-1992 up to the 1994 cease fire, IRA units in east and south Tyrone executed a total of eight mortar attacks against police and military facilities and were also responsible for at least 16 bombings and shootings. [68], At least two minor engagements occurred in the following weeks between members of the brigade and British Army foot patrols. at the hands of the IRA in the five weeks prior to Loughgall.) the Irish government was still the Free State government, a partition "[20], The SAS ambush had no noticeable long-term effect on the level of IRA activity in East Tyrone. memories of the Black and Tan war, stirred in the dim recesses of many After the shooting they drove past the house of Tony Doris, the IRA man killed the previous year, where they fired more shots in the air and were heard to shout, "Up the 'RA, that's for Tony Doris". If the RUC, he said, had prior information [78], From mid-1992 up to the 1994 cease fire, IRA units in east and south Tyrone carried out a dozen bomb and mortar attacks against RUC and military bases and assets. Enniskillen to the Unionist understanding of what Irish Nationalism and fifty RUC personnel, and at least five civilians since it began Thus it was from there that the IRA East Tyrone Brigade attacks were launched, with most of them occurring in east Tyrone in areas close to south Armagh, which offered good escape routes. 26 March 1997: a grenade was thrown by IRA volunteers at the British Army/RUC base in Coalisland. It smacks of revenge and retaliation. 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