Shankill Road bombing

Shankill Road bombing
Part of the Troubles
Aftermath of the bombing
Location	Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Coordinates	54°36′14″N 5°57′11″W / 54.604°N 5.953°W / 54.604; -5.953Coordinates: 54°36′14″N 5°57′11″W / 54.604°N 5.953°W / 54.604; -5.953
Date	23 October 1993 13:00 (GMT)
Target	Protestants
Attack type	Premature explosion of time bomb
Deaths	10 (including bomber)
Non-fatal injuries	57
Perpetrator	3rd Battalion, "A" Company, Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade

The Shankill Road bombing was a terrorist attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 23 October 1993 and is one of the most notorious incidents of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The IRA's intention was to assassinate Protestants who were Shopping in Frizzell's fish shop on Shankill Road, Belfast. Two IRA members were to enter the shop disguised as deliverymen, then force the customers out at gunpoint and plant a time bomb with a short fuse. However, when the IRA members entered the shop with the bomb, it exploded prematurely. One of the IRA members was killed along with a Nine Protestant civilians. More than fifty people were wounded. The Ulster loyalist Shankill Road had been the location of other bomb and gun attacks, including the Balmoral Furniture Company bombing in 1971 and Bayardo Bar attack in 1975, but the 1993 bombing had the highest casualties and resulted in a wave of revenge attacks by loyalists. In the week that followed, loyalists killed 14 civilians, almost all of them Irish Catholics. The deadliest attack took place in Greysteel, where UDA members opened fire in a pub frequented by Catholics, killing eight civilians and wounding 13.

During the early 1990s, loyalist paramilitaries drastically increased their attacks on the Irish Catholic and Irish nationalist community and – for the first time since the beginning of the Troubles – were responsible for more deaths than republicans. The UDA's West Belfast brigade, and its commander Johnny Adair, played a key role in this. Adair had become the group's commander in 1990.

The UDA's Shankill headquarters was above Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill Road. The UDA's Inner Council and West Belfast brigade regularly met there on Saturdays.Peter Taylor says it was also the office of the Loyalist Prisoners' Association (LPA), and on Saturday mornings was normally crowded, as that was when money was given to prisoners' families. According to Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, the IRA had the building under surveillance for some time. They say that the IRA decided to strike when one of their scouts spotted Adair entering the building on the morning of Saturday 23 October 1993. Later, in a secretly-recorded conversation with police, Adair confirmed that he had been in the building that morning.