Glenanne barracks bombing | |
---|---|
Part of the Troubles | |
Part of the UDR barracks after the attack
|
|
Location | Near Mountnorris, County Armagh, Northern Ireland |
Coordinates | 54°14′14.54″N 6°30′17.42″W / 54.2373722°N 6.5048389°WCoordinates: 54°14′14.54″N 6°30′17.42″W / 54.2373722°N 6.5048389°W |
Date | 31 May 1991 23:30 (UTC) |
Attack type
|
Bombing, gunfire |
Weapons | Truck bomb |
Deaths | 3 soldiers |
Non-fatal injuries
|
10 soldiers 4 civilians |
Perpetrator | Provisional IRA |
The Glenanne barracks bombing was a large truck bomb attack carried out by the Provisional IRA against a British Army (Ulster Defence Regiment) base at Glenanne, near Mountnorris, County Armagh. The driverless lorry was rolled down a hill at the rear of the barracks and crashed through the perimeter fence. The bombing took place on 31 May 1991 and left three soldiers killed and 14 people wounded, four of them civilians.
The bombing took place at a time when the Northern Ireland Office arranged multi-party talks (known as the Brooke/Mayhew talks) on the future of Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin members were not invited to attend because of their links with the IRA, which prevented them from being recognised as a 'constitutional' party. The talks ended in failure soon after.
Built in 1972, the barracks housed two companies of the 2nd County Armagh battalion of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). Seen as an outpost, it sat on the dividing line between a Protestant area and a Catholic area. Although the military barracks itself had not been attacked by the IRA before, seven UDR soldiers from the base had already been killed during "The Troubles".
Author Kevin Toolis lists the destruction of Glenanne UDR barracks in County Armagh as part of the cycle of violence and tit-for-tat killings in neighbour County Tyrone. The IRA would later claim that the death of three of its men in the town of Coagh was an SAS retaliation for the Glenanne bombing.
At 11:30 PM, a driverless truck loaded with 2,500 lb (1,100 kg) of a new type of home made explosive was rolled down a hill at the rear of the barracks and crashed through the perimeter fence. According to a witness, a UDR lance corporal who alerted the base, the truck was a Mercedes, and a Toyota Hiace van carrying at least two men acted as a support vehicle. The men were seen outside the parked van, masked and armed one with a handgun, the other with a submachine gun. Automatic fire was heard by other witnesses just before the main blast. A Reuters report claims that IRA members triggered the bomb by firing upon the driverless vehicle. It was later determined that the lorry had been stolen the day before in Kingscourt, County Cavan in the Republic of Ireland.