Six IRA members from a supporting unit managed to slip away. 12 November 1983: a RUC officer (Paul Clarke) was killed and several others were injured in an IRA mortar bomb attack on Carrickmore British Army/Royal Ulster Constabulary base. 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. 10 February 1997: a horizontal mortar fired by an IRA unit hit an RUC armoured vehicle leaving a security base. That same year, the Sinn. He thinks it would be silly of the British to build a hard Border again and potentially stir up those tensions. [83] The IRA asserts instead that the barracks were "extensively damaged". That was not to do with economics. Even a few customs posts stopping HGVs crossing the Border would not change that, McKearney says. [65][66][67] Six paratroopers were charged with criminal damage in the aftermath, but were acquitted in 1993. They concluded that the SAS were justified in opening fire. Over 50 shots were fired by the unit. The base was raked with gunfire and a JCB digger with a 200lb (91kg) bomb in its bucket was driven through the perimeter fence. [7], Members of the East Tyrone Brigade had previously carried out two attacks on RUC bases in their operational area, described by author Mark Urban as "spectaculars". The UVF killed 40 people in East Tyrone between 1988 and 1994. He would later serve as a member of Fianna Fil during the 1930s. Policewoman shot as nationalist anger at Drumcree parade spreads across Northern Ireland", "British soldier shot dead Massive Strabane landmine", "South Armagh Brigade claims sniper attack", Cousin of bomb suspect was top Provo; But gun victim denies being a terrorist, "Militants Angry About Police's Defense Of Protestant March". Both share left-wing views and believe that the interests of Border counties are not being well served by the European Union. Another British soldier was injured in Pomeroy when his patrol was fired on by an IRA unit on 2 August 1992. There were no casualties. I just mean in terms of chaos and upheaval political, economic and otherwise.. We are an unruly people, and if there is an opportunity to be unruly again we will take it, but it will not be violence, he says. See: Attack on UDR Clogher barracks [13], In December 2011, the Historical Enquiries Team found that not only did the IRA team fire first but that they could not have been safely arrested. He was sentenced to 20 years in 2011 but was released after two years, under the Belfast Agreement. The Real Irish Republican Army (Real IRA, or rIRA) was a republican militant group that operated during and after the Troubles in Northern Ireland. [115][64] Among them there were Constable Andrew Beacom and Reserve Constable Ernest Smith, the two RUC members ambushed and shot dead while driving a civilian type vehicle in Fivemiletown's main street on 12 December 1993. This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 19:23. UTV News Report: In Pomeroy an IRA horizontal mortar hit an RUC car but failed to explode. The device landed unexploded inside the complex, resulting in its evacuation. The bomb exploded ten minutes later, destroying the barracks. [28] On 16 September 1989, a British sergeant of the Royal Corps of Signals (Kevin Froggett) was shot and killed by an IRA sniper while he was repairing a radio mast at Coalisland Army/RUC base. Five Sinn Fin cumainn, and 90% of the East Tyrone Brigade, left in the move. A primed Mk-12 horizontal mortar was defused near Clogher on 9 April 1992 by British Army technicians,[109] while a trailer carrying a 'barrack buster' was recovered by security forces and also defused in the same area on 16 January 1994. McGeough sees the Troubles as ostensibly a failure, but the UK government does not want a return to those days any more than anybody on our side does. Gerry McGeough, who is now a farmer, served time in German, US and Northern Irish prisons for paramilitary-related offences, including trying to buy Stinger surface-to-air missiles in 1983 with the aim of taking down British army helicopters. [35][36][37], On 24 March 1990, there was a gun battle between an IRA unit and undercover British forces in the main street of the village of Cappagh, County Tyrone, in which IRA members fired at a civilian-type car driven by security forces, according to Archie Hamilton, then Secretary of State for Defence. The oldest child in a Catholic family of five, Kelly was born in the largely Protestant town of Carrickfergus. An IRA volunteer was arrested, while two other members of the IRA made good their escape. The first phase of Lynagh's plan to drive out the British security forces from east Tyrone involved destroying isolated rural police stations and then intimidating or killing any building contractors who were employed to rebuild them. The bombing was at Teebane Crossroads, near Cookstown. However, as their attack was underway, the IRA unit was ambushed by a Special Air Service (SAS) unit. The area was previously secured by a group of armed volunteers. In initial papers filed last week both the British prime minister, Theresa May, and the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, referred to their desire to protect the peace process. 26 February 1978: IRA Volunteer Paul Duffy was killed by the SAS in Coagh. Instead Lynagh, McKearney and the other six IRA activists - Gerard O'Callaghan, 29, Tony Gormley, 25, Eugene Kelly, 25, Patrick Kelly, 30, Seamus Donnelly, 19, and Declan Arthurs, 21 - were shot. Stephen Fuller (d. 1984), a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence and fought with Anti-Treaty forces during the Irish Civil War (1922-23). [16] Additionally, most of the attacks which took place in County Fermanagh during this period of the Troubles were also launched from south Tyrone and Monaghan. The six attackers gathered on the same spot, instead of vanishing separately. 5 July 1997: An IRA volunteer shot and seriously wounded an RUC female officer in the town of Coalisland during an attack on an armoured vehicle beside the Army/RUC base. An inquest into their deaths. [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. A second shooting took place in the village of Pomeroy on 28 June, this time against British regular troops. The level of IRA activity in the area did not show any real decline in the aftermath: in the two years prior to the Loughgall ambush the IRA killed seven people in East Tyrone and North Armagh, and eleven in the two years following the ambush. [77], The commander in chief of the brigade,[78] Kevin MacKenna, was also appointed 'chief of staff' of the IRA in 1983. . The European Union is as much of an imperial power as if not more than Britain at the moment, Lynagh says. [59], The brigade was the first to use the Mark-15 Barrack-Buster mortar in an attack on 5 December 1992 against an RUC station in Ballygawley. [80], 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. Wheres the insurrectionary energy going to come from? Elsewhere, the East Tyrone IRA lost eighteen members to SAS ambushes between 1987 and 1992. The South Armagh area was considered to be a liberated zone already, since British troops and the RUC could not use the roads there for fear of roadside bombs and long-range harassing fire. 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=1137091264, Provisional Irish Republican Army Brigades, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking reliable references from October 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 14 September 1971: a British soldier (John Rudman, aged 21) was shot dead while on mobile patrol, Edendork, near. The IRA claimed the man was a UVF commander, responsible for the killings of Catholic civilians. 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". The two men have a long personal history linked to a time and territory around the Border that witnessed some of the regions bloodiest episodes. No casualties were reported. The British are sending a plausibly deniable mixed message. [130] The latter attack led to loyalist allegations that the IRA was killing Protestant land-owners in Tyrone and Fermanagh[131] in an orchestrated campaign to drive Protestants out of the region, to the point that they drew an analogy with contemporaneous ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. The former IRA volunteer served 18 years in the Maze prison for the murder of a UVF man in Belfast in February 1976. He explains to Simon Carswell how Brexit is the best thing ever for Irish nationalists and republicans. G Bill Gannon George Gilmore H Sean Hales Tom Hales Sen Hogan Charlie Hurley K However, as their attack was underway, the IRA unit was ambushed by a Special Air Service (SAS) unit. [119] Two of the wounded were also off-duty UDR soldiers. He also wrote the best-selling book "The IRA - A Secret History". Two RUC officers were shot dead and the base was raked with gunfire before being destroyed by a bomb. Patrick Joseph Kelly (19 March 1957 - 8 May 1987), was the Commander of the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army during the mid-1980s until his death in a Special Air Service ambush at Loughgall, County Armagh in May 1987. You might have someone taking a potshot sometime, but if you are talking about a serious insurgency or a serious campaign, anything that remotely emulates the Provisional IRAs campaign, it is not going to happen. [26] 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. [49], On 3 June 1991, three IRA men, Lawrence McNally, Michael "Pete" Ryan, and Tony Doris, died in another SAS ambush at Coagh, where their car was riddled with gunfire. The heavy projectile landed at the rear of the small base without exploding, forcing the evacuation of Coronation Park housing state. In April 1987 the brigade shot and killed Harold Henry, one of the main building contractors to the security forces in Northern Ireland. They see that threat as little more than a scare tactic to force the future of the 499km Border to the centre of the two-year Brexit negotiations. . He would be the longest-serving volunteer in this position, right up to the 1997 ceasefire.[148]. The South Armagh area was considered to be a liberated zone already, since British troops and the RUC could not use the roads there for fear of roadside bombs and long-range harassing fire. [64], Another IRA bomb attack on 12 May 1992, against British troops on patrol near Cappagh, in which a paratrooper lost both legs, triggered a series of clashes on that date between soldiers and local residents in the staunchly republican town of Coalisland, on 12 and 17 May 1992. [4] The theory involved creating "no-go zones" that the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) did not control and gradually expanding them. [78], On 30 March 1993, one of the brigade units claimed they thwarted a British undercover operation by detonating an explosive device in the Glen, between Loughmacrory and Mountfield, near the spot where the British personnel were hidden. [134]There were a number of actions carried out by the IRA in the eastern part of Tyrone from 1996 up to the latest IRA ceasefire of July 1997: Risn McAliskey, daughter of political activist Bernadette McAliskey and suspected IRA member from Coalisland was accused by German authorities of being involved in a mortar attack on British Army facilities in Osnabrck, Germany, on 28 June 1996. IRA veterans Brexit feature - pix Gerry McGeough Former Provisional IRA volunteer Gerry McGeough, who served time in prison for the attempted murder of a UDR man in 1981, on his farm near Dungannon, Co Tyrone. He pours cold water on the possibility of a nationalist majority in the North voting for Irish reunification in light of the unionists losing their majority for the first time in last months Assembly elections. They could kill many British security force. [9], Mural commemorating those killed in the Loughgall Ambush, On 8 May 1987, at least eight members of the brigade launched another attack on the unmanned Loughgall RUC base. The bomb detonated, destroying much of the base and damaging nearby buildings. On 3 September 2012 prominent Real IRA member Alan Ryan was shot dead in Dublin. In July 1983, the East Tyrone Brigade carried out a landmine ambush on an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) mobile patrol near Ballygawley, killing three UDR soldiers (a fourth UDR soldier died later). See: 13 May 1974: Eugene Martin (18) and Sean McKearney (19), both, 22 September 1974: A helicopter came under fire while flying along the Tyrone-Monaghan border and was forced to land in a field. This was the IRA's greatest loss of life in a single incident during its campaign. For younger. Film report. Stephen Fuller (d. 1984), a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence and fought with Anti-Treaty forces during the Irish Civil War (1922-23). . Former IRA gunrunner John Crawley says he used to meet Martin McGuinness in the 1980s in the Botanic Gardens in Dublin to discuss operations. O'Donnell had been released without charges for possession of weapons on two different occasions in the past. Leading `Real IRA' member is shot dead in Ballymurphy. 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. [9] The theory involved creating "no-go zones" that the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) did not control and gradually expanding them. Lynagh, a fellow republican, served eight years, from 1982 to 1990, in Portlaoise Prison over a charge related to the killing of a nightclub bouncer in Monaghan in 1981. In 1987, an East Tyrone IRA unit was ambushed and eight of its members killed by the SAS while bombing an RUC base at Loughgall, County Armagh. Ed Moloney, Irish journalist and author of the Secret History of the IRA, states that the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade lost 53 members killed in the Troubles, the highest of any rural Brigade area. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. [5] Lynagh's plans met strong criticism from senior brigade member Kevin McKenna, who regarded the strategy as "too impractical, too ambitious, and not sustainable" in the words of journalist Ed Moloney. Sniper Assault Kills A British Soldier in Belfast", "South Armagh Brigade claims sniper attack", http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/27929, Cousin of bomb suspect was top provo; But gun victim denies being a terrorist, Militants Angry About Police's Defense Of Protestant March, CAIN - Listing of Programmes for the Year:1997 - UTV news, 9 July 1997, Loughgall and why the truth will never be told, Articles incorporating text from Wikipedia. Her extradition from Northern Ireland was eventually denied in 2007 due to discrepancies in the claims against her. Her extradition from Northern Ireland was refused in 2007. [99][100], On 9 April 1994, after a three-day IRA ceasefire, a Mark-15 mortar was launched at midday at the British Army permanent checkpoint in Aughnacloy. Martin McGuinness in the Botanic Gardens in Dublin to discuss operations wrote the best-selling &... Claimed the man was a UVF man in Belfast in February 1976 before being destroyed a! 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