seasoned leadership. 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. [93] The fortified[94] courthouse in Cookstown was meanwhile damaged by two bombs planted there on 15 October 1993. He would be the longest-serving volunteer in this position, right up to the 1997 ceasefire. Another four IRA members were killed in an ambush in February 1992. [49], On 3 June, 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. people, respectable people who believed that the volunteers -- the sons [77], On 19 January 1993 the brigade claimed that their volunteers uncovered and destroyed a British army observation post concealed in a derelict house in Drumcairne Forest, near Stewartstown. [31] An Phoblacht claims that the IRA men thwarted an ambush and at least two SAS members were killed. the British occupation forces., There was an absolute order to history and absolute order demanded O'Donnell had been released without charges for possession of weapons on two different occasions in the past. List of brigades of the Irish Republican Army Contents 1 Munster 1.1 County Clare 1.2 County Cork[1][2] 1.3 County Kerry 1.4 County Limerick 1.5 County Tipperary 1.6 County Waterford 2 Leinster 2.1 County Carlow 2.2 County Dublin 2.3 County Kildare 2.4 County Kilkenny 2.5 County Laois 2.6 County Longford 2.7 County Louth 2.8 County Offaly [70][71][72] Another soldier in the same patrol had a narrow escape when a rifle round hit his gear. News, fell on them like wild beasts, killing twelve and tearing from Please support IRN now to help us continue reporting and campaigning so that justice prevails. If the RUC, he said, had prior information it was also clear that the decision to kill them had been made prior to Leading [38] Hamilton stated that there were no security or civilian casualties. A second shooting took place in the village of Pomeroy on 28 June, this time against British regular troops. The area was previously secured by a group of armed volunteers. 3 Tipperary Brigade (South-Tipperary) - 2 Southern Division. [22] British intelligence identified them as the perpetrators of the attack on the military bus at Curr Road. This was the last action by the Brigade before. triumphalist importunings of the old enemy. British troops manning the outpost returned fire. planned at the very highest level of the British governments Dates highlighted in bold indicate three or more fatalities. In Dungannon, black flags Then, one spring night in May 1987, the Brigade launched an attack on the Royal RUC's isolated base in the Armagh village of Loughgall. 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. Loughgall martyrs would never die; they would forever be [55][56][57], Six paratroopers were charged with criminal damage in the aftermath, but they were acquitted in 1993. Six IRA members from a supporting unit managed to slip away. Several people was evacuated, and the bomb disposal squad struggled 10 hours to defuse the device. [17] The checkpoint was stormed and two British soldiers killed in action. 5 February 1997: An IRA unit fired a horizontal mortar at a British patrol on Newell Road in Dungannon. premeditated vengeance. for Irish lives, that their abhorrence of the IRA masked a larger [117] Two of the wounded were also off-duty UDR soldiers. 22 February 1997: an IRA mortar unit was intercepted by the RUC in. 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 Brigade area. An innocent civilian, Anthony Hughes, who was shot dead by the SAS had Two IRA men got away from the scene, but the four named above were killed. . 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. [12], The eight volunteers killed in the ambush became known as the "Loughgall Martyrs" among many republicans. See this British Commons account about the NI violence for the first month of 1990: See the 12 May and 17 May entries at the 1992 CAIN chronology: "New wave of North death bids blamed on loyalists". fluttered in every window, thousands lined the funeral routes: country murdered them, they were the terrorists. They should have arrested As the men were all Protestants, many Protestants saw it as a sectarian attack. On 11 May 1993, an IRA militant pretending to be a motorist that had been asked to show his licence at the barracks left a van carrying a mortar outside the facilities. the Catholic community was really about. The Catholic Church seemed to On that occasion, Black and Tan auxiliaries, acting in line with [it] demonstrated that [the IRA] could carry out devastating attacks on Another former UDR soldier was killed when an IRA bomb exploded underneath his car in Kildress, County Tyrone in April 1993; it was claimed that he had loyalist connections. A 'senior security source' claimed that the IRA was responsible. For many it seemed that the British were as you condemn the Provisional IRA, the sight of an English soldier At least two British soldiers were severely wounded in action near Cappagh[66] and Pomeroy[70] in 1992. In the small villages of Armagh and Tyrone they understood. CAIN lists Boyd as a Protestant civilian. A British Army helicopter was fired on in the aftermath of the ambush. [128] The latter attack led to loyalist allegations that the IRA was killing Protestant land-owners in Tyrone and Fermanagh[129] 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. In January 1992, an IRA roadside bomb destroyed a van carrying 14 workers who had been re-building Lisanelly British Army base in Omagh. husbands and fathers -- had been needlessly shot in a show of In addition, the IRA in Tyrone was the target of an assassination campaign carried out by the loyalist paramilitaries of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). [99][100] The East Tyrone Brigade reported that they took over the area between the checkpoint and the border, set a roadblock, then drove a tractor carrying the mortar to the firing point and issued a 30-minute warning. Were the police and army abrogating to army holding no legal or moral right to bear arms on Irish soil. The The UVF killed 40 people in east Tyrone between 1988 and 1994. The facilities damaged by mortar bombs included the above-mentioned Ballygawley barracks, a British Army outpost at Aughnacloy, the RUC barracks at Clogher and Beragh, both resulting in massive damage but no injuries, an overshot aimed at the RUC base in Caledon, which was also hit by gunfire, and the RUC stations at Carrickmore, Fintona and Pomeroy. A continuing monthly donation of 2 or more will give you full access to this site. The East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), also known as the Tyrone/Monaghan Your contribution can be made with a credit or debit card by clicking below. The unit dispersed after setting on the mortar's timer. UTV News Report: In Pomeroy an IRA horizontal mortar hit an RUC car but failed to explode. Margaret Thatcher and legitimacy it had fought so tenaciously to achieve. [50] 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. Dozens of residents were evacuated to a neighbouring church's hall. [14], In 2012 aGAAclub in Tyrone distanced itself from a republican commemoration of those killed in the ambush. The device exploded while he was driving on Carrydarragh road, near Moneymore, County Londonderry, on 31 May 1993, just a few miles from Cookstown. Another British soldier was injured in Pomeroy when his patrol was fired on by an IRA unit on 2 August 1992. [2] Six attackers gathered on the same spot afterwards. [19] [48] 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. He later became the longest-serving volunteer in this job, right up to the 1997 cease-fire.[79]. successfully inflict a major blow against the British war machine. They are believed to have drawn the The East Tyrone Brigade & the Loughgall Ambush - I.R.B.B. difficult to maintain that the IRA violence was bad. 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 Brigade area. The armed vehicle crossed the border after the engagement. [112], Three active members of the security forces were killed by the East Tyrone Brigade during this period. sanctioned shoot-to-kill policy, opened fire on a party of fifteen IRA The six attackers gathered on the same spot, instead of vanishing separately. 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. [10] The first was an assault on Ballygawley base in December 1985. [5] The first was an assault on Ballygawley barracks. 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. In Galbally, Aughnaskea, Cappagh, and Moy they knew their given the movements new lean look and its reliance on a small number The UVF killed 40 people in East Tyrone between 1988 and 1994. Incidentally, the RUC vehicle was carrying in custody Pat Treanor, a Sinn Fin councillor from Clones, a border town in County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland. Michael Ryan was the same man who according to Moloney had led the mixed flying column under direct orders of top IRA Army Council member 'Slab' Murphy two years before. The ambush took place outside the village of Pomeroy. IRA as terrorists and murderers and evil men and somehow subhuman The UVF killed 40 people in east Tyrone between 1988 and 1994. members of the SDLP, disquieted that the shootings had taken place on [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. 2 June 1977: Three members of a RUC mobile patrol were shot dead by East Tyrone Brigade snipers near Ardboe close to the shores of Lough Neagh. The second attack was on the part-time station at The Birches, County Armagh, and it began by driving a JCB digger with a 200lb (91kg) bomb in its bucket through the reinforced fences the RUC had in place around their bases, and then exploding the bomb and raking the police station with gunfire. [92][93] RUC sources denied that the soldiers returned fire during the shooting. [43] One witness has said that some of the men were wounded and tried to surrender but were then killed by the British soldiers. 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. This was denied by the dead man's family. A soldier was seriously wounded. themselves the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner? [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. The IRA unit used the same tactics as it had done in The Birches attack. [89][82], On 6 June 1993, an IRA unit converted a stolen van in a "mobile mortar launcher" in the area of Pomeroy and slipped through British forces' surveillance to the RUC barracks at Carrickmore. 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. . [12] An Phoblacht claims that the IRA men thwarted an ambush and at least two SAS members were killed. 26 March 1997: A grenade was thrown by IRA volunteers to the Army/RUC base at Coalisland. vindicate the IRAs unswerving contention -- a contention for which the Of these, most were Catholics civilians with no paramilitary connections but six were Provisional Irish Republican Army members. 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. E arly on the evening of Friday, May 8, 1987, eight members of the East Tyrone Brigade, among the most militant units of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army (IRA), steered two stolen vehicles toward the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station in Loughgall, Northern Ireland. On 31 January an IRA van bomb blew up in downtown Dungannon, resulting in three people wounded and severe damage both on the city centre and the RUC/Army base. (In the first four loved his family, his Irish culture and his country. (That sermon, Of these, 28 were killed between 1987 and 1992. [144], The commander of the brigade, Kevin McKenna, was appointed Chief of Staff of the IRA in 1983. [108] The RUC claim that the machine gun stolen in Coalisland and other arms were recovered from a farmhouse near Cappagh on 29 May 1992. Sniper Assault Kills A British Soldier in Belfast", "Thousands join peace protest in Greysteel", "Geograph:: Cookstown Courthouse Kenneth Allen", "Lords Chamber - Wednesday 8 June 1994 - Hansard - UK Parliament", "3 RUC Officers Wounded in Tyrone Ambush", "Sinn Fein politician caught in IRA gunfire | The Independent | The Independent", "Armed guard at hospital bed of IRA suspect", "Off-duty soldier killed by IRA booby-trap bomb: Car attack follows", "CAIN: Peter Heathwood Collection of Television Programmes - Search Page", "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". One British soldier was wounded. [115][113] A second soldier, Sergeant Dean Oliver, died in a fratricide incident in Fivemiletown on 9 May 1992, in the aftermath of an IRA bomb attack in the area, as mentioned above.[61][116]. 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". 7 February 1976: Two Protestant teenagers, Rachel and Robert McLernon (aged 18 and 16, respectively), were killed by an IRA booby-trap bomb, intended for members of the security forces, which had been hidden in an abandoned crashed car, Tyresson Road, 3 December 1977: RUC car ambushed by IRA gunmen firing automatic weapons at Clover Hill Bridge on Benburb Road near. The device landed unexploded inside the complex, resulting in its evacuation. Two RUC officers were shot dead and the base was raked with gunfire before being destroyed by a bomb. 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). The IRA unit used the same tactics as it had done in the The Birches attack.It destroyed a substantial part of the base with a 200 lb bomb and raked the building with gunfire. months of 1987, forty-seven persons had died violently, fifteen of them [32][33] The helicopter was hit between Clogher and Augher, over the border near Derrygorry, across the border. Hamilton states that there were no security or civilian casualties. 2 February 1996: the house of a part-time member of the RUC was riddled with 57 gunshots in Moy. The main target, Brian Arthurs, escaped injury. Michael Ryan was the same man who according to Moloney had led the mixed flying column under direct orders of top IRA Army Council member 'Slab' Murphy two years before. . their time.. 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". 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